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or  illustrated  impression. 


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met!  .td: 


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conformity  avec  les  conditions  du  contrat  de 
filmage. 

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dernlAre  page  qui  comporte  une  empreinte 
d'impression  ou  d'illustration,  soit  par  le  second 
plat,  salon  le  cas.  Tous  les  autres  exemplaires 
originaux  sont  filmte  en  commenpant  par  la 
premiere  page  qui  comporte  une  empreinte 
d'impression  ou  d'illustration  et  en  terminant  par 
la  derniire  page  qui  comporte  une  telle 
empreinte. 

Un  des  symboles  suivants  apparaitra  sur  la 
derniira  image  de  cheque  microfiche,  selon  le 
cas:  le  symboie  — ^  signifie  "A  SUIVRE  ",  le 
symbols  V  signifie  "FIN". 

Les  cartes,  planches,  tableaux,  etc.,  peuvent  dtre 
film6s  d  des  taux  de  reduction  diff^rents. 
Lorsque  le  document  est  trop  grand  pour  dtre 
reproduit  en  un  seul  cliche,  il  est  filmi  A  partir 
de  I'angle  supirieur  gauche,  de  gauche  A  droits, 
et  de  haut  en  bas,  en  prenant  le  nombre 
d'images  nicessaire.  Les  diagrammes  suivants 
illustrent  la  mtthode. 


1  2  3 


32X 


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IP 


Music  and  the  Comrade 
Arts ;  Their  Relation 


I 


By 
H.  A.  Clarke,  Mus.  Doc. 

Professor  of  Music  in  the  University 
of  Pennsylvania 


Silver,  Burdett  and  Company,  Publishers 
Boston        New  York         Chicago 


Copyright,  i8gg 

By 

Silver,  Burdett  and  Company 


University  of  Reg/na 


■•"" "  ""•'•»*■■«*■ 


PREFACE. 

In  this  small  book  the  aim  of  the  writer  was 
to  present,  in  a  clear  concise  form,  the  mutual 
relations  and  inter  dependencies  of  the  various 
Arts,  and  their  relation  to  Science. 

The  writer  had  two  objects  in  view :  first,  to 
point  out  that  though  Art  is  based  on  Science, 
its  manifestations,  in  its  higher  forms,  are  not 
subject  to  scientific  laws,  but  to  (Esthetic  laws, 
which  psychology,  when  far  enough  advanced, 
may  succeed  in  formulating;  second,  that  the 
unifying  principle  of  the  Arts  is^Form. 

H.  A,  CLARKE. 

Philadelphia,  Pa., 
August,  1899. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.  The    Relations    between    Art 

AND  Science     ....         7 

II.  The   Relation   between   Music 

AND   THE   OTHER   ArTS        .  .  29 

III.  The   Place  of  Art  in  Educa- 

tion   51 

IV.  The    Relation    between    Art 

AND  Religion  ....      70 

V.  The  Power  of  Art  to  Express 

Thought  and  Emotion  .        .       88 

VI.  Vocal  AND  Instrumental  Music,    106 


Music  and  the  Comrade 

Arts: 
Their  Relation. 


CHAPTER  I. 


THE   RELATIONS   BETWEEN  ART   AND 

SCIENCE. 

THE  artist  or  teacher  who  confines  his 
attention  to  the  province  of  the  art 
he  practices  or  teaches  is  sure  to  miss 
seeing  that  art  in  its  true  proportions  and 
in  its  relations  to  the  sister  arts,  and,  in- 
deed, to  all  the  other  interests  and  efforts 

7 


8     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 


I  ^ 


that  make  up  the  sum  of  human  knowl- 
edge. Nor  can  he  who  is  ignorant  or  un- 
mindful of  these  relations  be  said  to  know 
his  own  art.  There  is  a  natural  tendency 
in  all  of  us  to  magnify  our  office,  which  is 
right  and  proper  so  long  as  we  do  not  go 
to  the  extreme  of  holding  it  as  the  one 
thing  in  the  world  that  is  worthy  of  at- 
tention, or  of  depreciating  the  work  of 
our  fellows.  All  things  in  the  universe 
exist  in  mutual  interdependence.  It  is 
only  by  studying  each  thing  in  its  relation 
to  all  the  rest  that  a  true  conception  can 
be  gained  of  its  place  and  office  in  the 
affairs  of  life. 

In  the  study  of  the  Fine  Arts,  namely, 
Poetry,  Painting,  Sculpture,  Music,  and 
Architecture,  we  will  consider,  first,  the 
relations  between  Art  and  Science  as  of 
prime  importance.  It  is  the  province  of 
Science  to  treat  of  that  which  may  be 
known,  measured,  or  weighed;  of  those 


Art  and  Science. 


operations  and  sequences  in  the  world  of 
matter  which  we  call— for  want  of  a  bet- 
ter name— the  laws  of  nature.     Science, 
in  other  words,  deals  only  with  tangible 
qualities.     Its   appeal  is  made  solely  to 
the    intellect.     Even   though   the   term, 
**  scientific  imagination,"  has  been  used 
by  one  of  the  greatest  of  modern  scientific 
men,    it   is  an  imagination  so  chastened 
and  curbed  by  stern  facts  and  rigorous 
logic  as  to  bear  about  the  same  relation 
to  the  imagination  of  the  poet  or  musician 
that  the  tamed  lightning  of  the  telegraph 
system  does  to  the  free  bolts  of  Heaven. 
Art,  on  the  other  hand,  deals  only  with 
intangible   qualities— qualities   that  may 
be   neither  measured   nor  weighed— the 
operation   of  which  is   subject  to  a  far 
higher,  because  a  spiritual,  law.     Art  oc- 
cupies  a  region  midway  between  Science 
and  Moral  Law.     It  may  be  said,  once 
for  all,  that  Moral  Law  is,  or  ought  to  be, 


m 


lo     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 


1 


the  supreme  arbiter  in  the  mental  hier- 
archy, controlling  both  intellect  and 
emotion.  Art,  being  rooted  in  the  ma- 
terial world,  has  necessarily  its  scientific 
aspect;  but,  as  its  fruits  are  borne  high 
into  a  spiritual  atmosphere,  its  chief  re- 
lations are  with  Moral  Law.  Still,  be- 
ing human  and  not  divine,  it  rests  with 
the  cultivator  whether  it  diffuse  fragrance 
or  poison  in  the  moral  atmosphere;  it 
being  unfortunately  true  that  the  most 
precious  of  blessings  may  be  degraded 
into  the  most  virulent  of  evils. 

There  is  another  very  important  dis- 
tinction between  Science  and  Art.  In 
Science,  results  may  be  foreseen  and  fore- 
told with  absolute  accuracy ;  as  when  the 
astronomer,  after  long  pondering  on  the 
motions  of  the  planets,  said  that  by 
pointing  a  telescope  at  a  certain  part  of 
the  sky,  a  new  planet  would  be  seen; 
or  when  the  chemist,   after  long  study 


Art  and  Science. 


II 


of  the  atomic  constitution  of  metalloids, 
prophesied  the  discovery  of  a  number 
yet  unknown — a  prophecy  which  after- 
discovery  confirmed. 

In  Art,  on  the  other  hand,  the  results 
can  never  be  foreseen,  and  no  direct  con- 
nection can  be  traced  between  the  cause 
and  the  effect ;  indeed,  the  effect  is  often 
out  of  all  proportion  to  the  cause.  You 
listen  to  a  succession  of  sounds,  and  they 
simply  weary  you ;  you  listen  to  another 
series,  differing  in  no  material  way  from 
the  first,  and  your  pulse  quickens,  the 
deepest  springs  of  emotion  are  stirred — 
the  soldier  will  rush  undaunted  to  certain 
death,  the  martyr  go  with  a  smile  into 
the  flame.  How  and  why  is  this  ?  Some 
claim  that  it  is  owing  to  the  arous- 
ing of  vague  associations.  This  may  be 
true  as  far  as  it  goes,  but  it  goes  a  very 
short  way.  Whence  does  the  succession 
of  sounds  get  the  power  so  to  awaken 


ii 


12     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 

associations  ?  What  is  the  nexus  between 
them  ?  On  this  side  Art  touches  the  in- 
finite in  man  with  a  power  second  only  to 
Religion. 

Bearing  this  distinction  always  in  mind, 
let  us  try  to  discover  what  the  relation  is 
between  Science  and  each  of  the  Arts. 
We  will  begin  with  Poetry,  which  is 
probably  the  oldest  of  the  sisterhood. 
To  what  science  is  it  related,  and  how  ? 
Among  the  many  wonderful  discoveries 
of  the  present  century,  not  the  least  won- 
derful is  the  discovery  and  formulation  of 
the  laws  of  language.  The  changes  that 
words  undergo,  the  inflections  they  as- 
sume, and  the  forms  their  combinations 
take  are  all  found  to  be  the  results  of 
inflexible  laws,  working  through  long  pe- 
riods of  time. 

The  law  which,  at  any  given  time,  gov- 
erns the  idiom  of  a  language — called  the 
grammar  of  a  language—is  a  scientific  law 


K> 


Art  and  Science. 


13 


that  has  binding  force  on  the  poet,  even 
although  we  admit  the  numerous  depar- 
tures from  it  found  in  the  great  poets. 
We  are  justified  in  calling  grammar  a 
scientific  law,  in  spite  of  the  seemingly 
capricious  forms  which  language  takes, 
because  philology,  although  not  yet  as 
exact  as  astronomy  or  inorganic  chemis- 
try,— nor  ever  likely  to  be,  owing  to  the 
multitude  of  factors  with  which  it  has  to 
deal, — has  still  advanced  far  enough  to 
enable  us  to  state  with  precision  the  forms 
which  a  given  word  or  grammatical  con- 
struction will  take  in  a  given  language. 

It  must  never  be  forgotten,  however, 
that  Art  is  for  the  most  part  entirely  un- 
conscious of  any  relation  to  Science.  No 
amount  of  philologic  knowledge  will  en- 
able one  to  write  poetry,  nor  will  igno- 
rance of  this  knowledge  disqualify  one 
who  is  gifted  with  the  poetic  faculty.  Yet 
the  poet  will  gain,  not  lose,  by  being  ac- 


14     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 

quainted  with  philology,  because  no  know- 
ledge, if  it  be  true,  is  ever  wasted;  and 
philology  may  make  words  disclose  new 
beauties  of  which  he  had  no  suspicion. 

Turn  next  to  Painting.  In  its  scientific 
aspect  it  is  dependent  on  the  laws  of 
light,  or  optics ;  on  the  laws  of  chemistry, 
which  supply  it  with  pigments;  and  on 
the  laws  of  mathematics,  which  treat  of 
perspective,  the  form  of  shadows,  angles 
of  vision,  and  so  on.  The  painter  may 
be  ignorant  of  optics  and  chemistry,  but 
he  must  be  familiar  with  the  laws  of  per- 
spective. Painting  has  therefore  a  more 
direct  dependence  on  Science  than  poetry, 
since  poetry  may  work  in  entire  ignorance 
of  Science,  whereas  painting  cannot. 

To  the  sculptor  one  branch  of  scientific 
knowledge  is  absolutely  essential ;  that  is, 
anatomy.  This  science  is  also  of  great 
use  to  the  painter,  but  with  him  it  is 
chiefly   restricted   to  the   surface.     The 


Art  and  Science. 


15 


sculptor,  however,  must  be  as  familiar 
with  anatomy  as  the  physiologist ;  indeed, 
even  more  so,  since  the  physiologist  is 
satisfied  with  determining  th.^  function  of 
an  organ,  while  the  sculptor  must  know, 
in  addition,  the  action  of  the  organ  in  the 
performance  of  its  function. 

We  come  now  to  the  art  in  which 
Science  plays  a  larger  part  than  in  any 
other;  namely.  Architecture.  Without 
constantly  leaning  on  Science,  architec- 
ture would  be  impossible.  The  scientific 
problems  with  which  it  has  to  deal  are 
infinite  and  of  great  complexity.  All 
these  problems  must  be  solved,  and,  in 
addition,  architecture  must  satisfy  all 
the  conditions  of  the  purpose  for  which 
the  building  is  designed, — questions  of 
strength,  of  material,  strain,  lighting, 
heating,  economy  of  space,  and  a  thou- 
sand others  must  all  be  solved  before  it 
can  make  any  claim  to  being  a  fine  art. 


1 6     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 


IS 


Hampered  as  the  architect  is  by  these 
things,  and  still  more  by  the  peremptory 
consideration  of  cost,  it  is  not  to  be  won- 
dered at  that  the  results  of  his  work  so 
often  fall  short  of  being  **  things  of 
beauty. 

Architecture  would  gain  by  frankly  ad- 
mitting that,  for  many  of  its  purposes,  the 
idea  of  beauty  should  be  completely 
eliminated.  The  requisites  of  the  factory 
and  machine  shop  are  strength,  stability, 
and  plenty  of  light.  The  very  plainness 
of  these  hom  of  labor  gives  them  a  dig- 
nity that  is  utterly  destroyed  by  any  at- 
tempts at  cheap  ornamentation.  From 
this  severe  simplicity  there  might  come  a 
gradual  ascent,  if  we  remember  always  that 
beauty  in  architecture  depends  altogether 
on  harmonious  design,  not  on  ornament, 
until  we  reach  the  great  public  buildings : 
the  Capitols,  public  libraries,  and  so  on. 
These  buildings  should   be  such   as  to 


Art  and  Science. 


17 


»'i 


mark  the  place  which  the  nation  has 
reached  in  the  evolution  of  civilization; 
they  should  be  symbols  of  the  wealth, 
power,  refinement,  and  liberality  of  a 
people  who  would  testify  to  future  gen- 
erations, by  these  structures,  their  pride 
in  and  love  for  their  country. 

Last  of  all  we  turn  to  our  own  art. 
Music.  It  will  be  necessary  to  enter  into 
the  relation  between  Music  and  Science 
somewhat  more  fully  than  we  have  into 
the  relations  of  the  other  arts  to  Science, 
there  being  a  widespread  but  erroneous 
impression  on  the  subject,  voiced  in  the 
term,  "  scientific  music  *';  which,  in  the 
mouths  of  those  who  use  it,  generally 
means  music  they  do  not  like.  There  is 
also  an  impression  that  Music  is  a  sort  of 
offshoot  of  mathematics, — than  which  I 
think  there  could  be  no  greater  mistake. 
Mathematics  is  the  most  exact — indeed 
the  only  exact  science.     Its  laws  are  im- 


1 


*: 


1 8     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 


Fy: 


mutable.  The  relations  of  time,  space, 
and  number  appeal  only  to  the  intellect, 
and  are  powerless  to  touch  the  emotions, 
in  spite  of  the  assertion  of  an  enthusiastic 
mathematician,  that  a  certain  equation 
was  like  the  **  language  of  a  seraph." 
Music,  on  the  other  hand,  is  like  the 
wind  which  "  bloweth  where  it  listeth  " ; 
and  so  difficult  is  it  to  reduce  its  motions 
to  laws,  or  to  frame  a  satisfactory  theory 
of  music,  that  it  is  a  common  complaint 
of  students  that  the  **  rules  of  music  con- 
sist chiefly  of  exceptions." 

Now  there  is  a  science  of  sound — acous- 
tics ;  sound  being  a  physical  phenomenon, 
its  laws  may  be  investigated  and  ascer- 
tained like  those  of  any  other  physical 
phenomenon.  But  the  science  of  acous- 
tics bears  just  the  same  relation  to  music 
that  philology  does  to  poetry.  Let  us 
briefly  consider  the  relation  between 
acoustics  and  music.     From  acoustics  we 


Art  and  Science. 


19 


learn  the  nature  of  sound,  and  the  dis- 
tinction between  musical  and  non-musical 
sound— that  is,  sound  fit  or  unfit  for  the 
musician's  purposes;  we  further  learn  the 
numerical  ratios  of  the  vibrations  which 
produce  sounds  of  different  pitch  and  the 
sounds  which  result  from  the  division  of 
the  vibrating  body  into  aliquot  parts ;  also 
much  about  the  conditions  upon  which 
the  quality  of  sounds  depends.  We 
learn,  too,  of  the  major  chord,  and  of  the 
chord  of  the  7th.  But^Sind  this  is  a 
very  large  but — the  scale  that  Science 
gives  us  is  not  the  scale  we  use.  So  of 
the  intervals  Science  gives  us,  with  the 
exception  of  the  octave ;  so  of  the  major 
chord,  and  of  the  chord  of  the  7th.  As 
to  the  minor  chord,  Science  has  only  an 
hypothesis  to  offer.  The  scale  of  Science 
is  obtained  by  the  division  of  a  string  into 
aliquot  parts;  the  scale  of  modern  music, 
by  the  division  of  the  octave  empirically 


20    Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 


v 


1 


1 1 


into  twelve  equal  parts.  True,  there  is  a 
very  close  correspondence  between  the 
scales  obtained  in  these  two  ways,  and  it 
maj/  be  that  it  is  this  close  correspondence 
which  makes  our  musical  scale  agreeable ; 
but  this  is  open  to  question  when  we  re- 
member that  millions  of  people  find  a 
totally  different  scale  agreeable. 

Now  the  most  distinguishing  charac- 
teristic of  music  is  melody;  that  is,  a 
rhythmic  arrangement  of  sounds  of  differ- 
ent pitch,  all  bearing  a  certain  relation  to 
one  sound,  called  the  key-note.  All  the 
mathematical  and  acoustical  lore  in  the 
world  would  not  endow  their  possessor 
with  the  ability  to  write  one  phrase  of 
the  Last  Rose  of  Summer ;  even  as  a 
**  speaking  acquaintance  "  with  all  the 
languages  of  men  since  the  dispersion  at 
Babel  would  not  enable  one  to  write 

"  Hark  !  the  lark  at  heaven's  gate  sings, 
And  Phoebus  'gins  arise." 


il. 


Art  and  Science. 


21 


The  science  of  sound  treats  only  of  the 
material  out  of  which  music  is  made,  and 
can  give  no  hint  of  how  to  use  it;  just 
as  the  chemist  can  produce  every  shade 
and  tint  of  color,  but  can  give  no  aid  to 
the  painter  in  their  use. 

The  science  of  sound  has  aided  music  in 
another  way.  It  has  immensely  improved 
all  our  musical  instruments — except  the 
violin  family.  We  build  better  pianos 
now  than  were  built  at  the  beginning  of 
the  century.  Yet  we  do  not — in  spite  of 
scientific  advance — write  such  music  for 
them  as  Mozart  and  Beethoven  wrote. 
Haydn  or  Mozart  would  be  filled  with 
amazement  at  hearing  the  Boston  Sym- 
phony Orchestra.  Such  precision,  such 
shading,  such  easy  mastery  of  technical 
difficulties  were  not  dreamed  of  in  their 
day.  Yet  their  symphonies  still  hold  the 
foremost  rank,  though  they  never  heard 
of  Helmholtz  or  Koenig.    All  these  gains, 


w 


rfs 


22     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 


■^ 


\ 


great  as  they  are,  are  merely  material,  and 
can  receive  value  only  from  the  genius  of 
those  who  can  make  of  them  means  for 
the  expression  of  thought,  feeling,  and 
emotion ;  things  that  may  not  be  weighed, 
measured,  or  numbered,  whose  seat  is  in 
that  mysterious  realm  of  being  with  which 
man  was  endowed  when  made  in  the 
image  of  his  Creator. 

Human  thought  and  speech  have 
always  recognized  the  fact  that  great 
works  of  art  originate  in  a  sphere  far  re- 
moved from  the  material.  The  poet,  the 
painter,  the  musician,  has  in  all  languages 
been  called  inspired — as  though  he 
wrought  under  the  influence  of  some 
power  outside  of  himself.  The  old 
Hebrew  in  his  simple  faith,  which  was 
perhaps  nearer  the  truth  than  we  so- 
phisticated moderns  believe,  spoke  of  all 
such  work  as  the  inspiration  of  God. 

There  is  another  part  of  Art  to  which 


Art  and  Science. 


23 


the  term  Science  is  often,  but  wrongly, 
applied;  that  is,  the  technical  manipula- 
tion of  the  material  with  which  the  artist 
works  when  moulding  it  into  art  forms. 
The  poet  must  master  the  various  metres 
used  in  the  language  he  writes,  its  variety 
of  stanzas,  its  forms  of  verse, — as  lyric 
poems,  odes,  sonnets,  epics,  etc.  But 
these  are  not  based  on  scientific  laws; 
nature  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  making 
of  them.  They  are  but  artifices,  whose 
only  reason  for  existing  is  that  they  have 
proved  agreeable  to  the  ears  or  eyes  of 
those  whose  ability  and  invention  first 
made  them  current.  If  they  were  scien- 
tific they  would  be  unchangeable;  but 
they  change  with  the  literary  or  artistic 
fashions  of  the  times. 

The  painter  and  the  sculptor  must  pass 
laborious  years  in  attaining  the  mastery 
of  the  technique  of  their  arts  before  the 
hand  will  obey  the  mind,  giving  a  free 


M  : 


IT 


fi 


:i 


i 


24     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 

sweep  to  the  pencil  or  brush  on  the  can- 
vas, or  that  curious  play  of  the  thumb 
with  which  the  sculptor  evokes  the  lifelike 
face  from  the  lump  of  lifeless  clay. 

In  our  own  art,  Music,  there  is  a  larger 
amount  of  technicality  or  artifice  than  in 
any  other.  It  is  to  this  that  many  per- 
sons, some  of  whom  ought  to  know  bet- 
ter, refer  when  they  speak  of  **  scientific 
music  "  ;  or  vent  the  foolish  opinion  that 
there  is  something  akin  to  mathematics 
in  music.  Does  experience  prove  that 
mathematicians  are  musically  inclined 
as  a  rule,  or  musicians  mathematically 
inclined  ?  I  venture  the  assertion  that 
there  is  nothing  so  rare  as  to  find  these 
mental  endowments  combined  in  the  same 
person.  If  even  the  closest-textured, 
dryest  fugue  is  mathematical  in  any  just 
sense  of  the  word,  it  ought  to  be  possible 
to  express  it  in  algebraic  symbols.  If 
this  can  be  done,  it  ought  to  be  possible 


U^ 


Art  and  Science. 


«5 


to  state  a  motive  by  a  +  x  —  y,  or  some 
such  cabalistic  signs ;  then  to  give  it  to  a 
mathematician  or  a  Babbage  machine,  and 
have  a  Beethoven  symphony  turned  out. 

It  may  be  that  this  notion  about  mathe- 
matics and  music  is  a  vague  echo  from  the 
disputes  of  the  Pythagoreans  and  Aris- 
toxenians, — a  dispute  which  was  revived 
in  the  Middle  Ages,  and  fought  with  all 
the  pedantries  and  personalities  which 
characterized  the  polemics  of  that  period. 
The  upholders  of  the  Pythagorean  side 
of  the  controversy  contended  that  the 
arithmetical  ratios  of  sounds  and  their 
resemblance  to  the  relations  between  cer- 
tain mathematical  forms  constituted  the 
true  art  of  music ;  while  the  followers  of 
Aristoxenus  maintained  what  their  oppo- 
nents considered  the  foolish,  frivolous 
idea  that  the  chief  end  of  music  was  to 
be  heard. 

The  artifices  of  music  are  many,  but 


[•. 


i 


Is 


M 

il 


26     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 


i 


/ 


/ 


/ 


the  most  important  may  be  ranged  under 
three  heads :  Harmony — which  treats  of 
the  combinations  and  successions  of 
sound ;  Counterpoint — which  treats  of  in- 
dependent movements  of  parts  or  voices ; 
Form — which  treats  of  the  order  and  suc- 
cession of  theme^. 

The  rules  that  embody  what  may  be 
learned  of  these  things  are  not  in  any 
sense  scientific.  They  have  varied,  and 
they  may  vary ;  they  are  merely  the  ex- 
pression, at  any  given  period  in  the  his- 
tory of  the  art,  of  what  those  engaged  in 
it  consider  the  best  way  to  use  its  material. 

To  sum  up,  Science  deals  with  the  ma- 
terial. Upon  this  as  a  deep,  firm  founda- 
tion must  all  Art  rest.  Art  must  have  a 
body,  a  means  of  manifesting  itself.  This 
it  constructs  for  itself,  not  by  means  of 
scientific  laws,  but  by  aesthetic  rules, 
which,  like  all  expedients,  are  subject  to 
change  and  decay.     But  this  body  of  Art, 


Art  and  Science. 


27 


its  technicalities,  is  a  lifeless  body  until  it 
is  vivified  by  the  spirit  which  comes  from 
above.  This  spirit  is  not  of  it,  but 
through  it.  Prisoned  as  we  are  in  a  ma- 
terial world,  the  soul  within  us  cannot 
communicate  with  other  souls  except 
through  the  material.  It  is  the  error  of 
materialism  to  identify  the  soul  with  the 
media  through  which  it  works ;  whereas, 
be  the  poem,  the  picture,  the  symphony, 
never  so  perfect,  it  falls  far  short  of  ex- 
pressing the  ideal  that  lay  in  the  mind  of 
its  author.  If  the  soul  or  spirit,  or  what- 
ever name  we  choose  to  give  it,  were  but 
the  result  or  outcome  of  a  **  fortuitous 
concourse  of  atoms,"  it  is  certain  that 
this  dissatisfaction  with  our  achievement 
could  never  come,  for  no  stream  can  rise 
higher  than  its  source.  But  in  this  very 
inability  to  realize  our  ideals  we  should 
find  encouragement  to  persevere,  not  only 
in  Art  but  in  things  of  much  greater  mo- 


J^ 


I 


SI: 


-( 


f 


i 


'I  I 


28     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 

ment, — in  right  living,  and  in  the  effort  to 
lighten  the  burden  of  other  lives,  a  func- 
tion which  no  art  can  perform  so  success- 
fully as  our  own  art  of  music,  taking 
rank,  as  it  does,  only  below  religion. 


P 


/ 


CHAPTER  II. 

THE   RELATION  BETWEEN   MUSIC  AND 
THE   OTHER  ARTS. 

HAVING  considered  the  relations  be- 
tween Art  and  Science,  it  seems 
appropriate  that  we  should  next  take  up 
the  relations  that  exist  among  the  arts, 
especially  the  relation  that  Music  bears  to 
the  other  arts.  It  is  only  by  looking  at 
the  art  of  music  in  this  way  that  a  true 
conception  of  its  position  and  claims  can 
be  reached,  and  an  intelligent  defence  of 
these  claims  can  be  urged.  The  first 
point  to  be  considered  in  such  a  compari- 
son is,  the  nature  and  limitations  of  the 

material  with  which  the  given  art  works ; 

29 


1 


i 


>fi 


^ 


30     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 

next,  the  subject-matter  with  which  it 
deals;  then,  the  forms  into  which  the 
nature  of  the  material  has  compelled  it  to 
cast  the  subject-matter;  and  lastly,  the 
nature  of  the  appeal  which  it  makes  to 
the  mind. 

First,  as  to  the  material.  The  most 
striking  characteristic  of  the  Fine  Arts  is 
the  apparent  poverty  and  simplicity  of  the 
material  with  which  they  work  their  most 
wonderful  effects,  —  words,  pigments, 
sounds,  clay.  The  commonest  things  in 
life  supply  all  the  needs  of  the  artist. 
Yet,,  with  these  slight  materials,  he  is  able 
to  raise  the  mind  from  the  contemplation 
of  the  actual  to  the  ideal ;  to  play,  as  on 
some  delicate  instrument,  upon  the  pro- 
foundest  emotions ;  to  lead  captive  and  to 
sport  at  will  with  all  the  changing  moods 
of  the  mind. 

The  material  of  Poetry  is  spoken  lan- 
guage; its   subject-matter  those  experi- 


i4! 


Music  and  the  Other  Arts.       31 

ences  and  observations  of  all  past  and 
present  generations  which  are  embalmed 
in  language.  In  addition  to  these,  a  pro- 
phetic power  gives  the  poet  ability  to 
forecast  the  thoughts  and  ways  of  future 
generations.  These  experiences  and  ob- 
servations the  poet  so  handles  as  to  reveal 
deep,  unexpected  relationships  and  mean- 
ings, invisible  to  the  ordinary  eye,  the 
profound  truth  of  which  the  poet's  lan- 
guage flashes  on  the  mind  with  the  vivid- 
ness of  lightning. 

It  is  difficult  to  furnish  any  fixed  defini- 
tion of  poetry.  There  is  a  gradual  ascent 
from  the  baldest  prose  to  the  loftiest 
poetry.  Poetry  must  be  rhythmic,  yet 
prose  is  often  rhythmic;  and  lines  of 
faultless  rhythm  are  too  often  far  from 
being  poetry.  The  following  lines,  for 
example,  are  unobjectionable  so  far  as 
rhythm  is  considered;  they  state  a 
momentous   fact;   yet    the    most   chari- 


r 

n 


I  \ 


i 


vm^ 


32     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 

table  interpretation  could  not  call  them 
poetry. 

"  The  world  will  disappear  some  day, 
And  nothing  will  remain. 
The  land,  the  sea,  will  pass  away. 
And  ne'er  be  seen  again." 

Compare  that  stanza  with  the  following 
lines,  in  which  the  same  momentous  fact 
is  stated,  but  with  a  difference : 


«   r 


The   cloud-capped   towers,   the   gorgeous 

palaces, 
The  solemn  temples,  the  great  globe  itself, 
Yea,  all  which  it  inherit,  shall  dissolve, 
And,  like  this  insubstantial  pageant  fa^ded, 
Leave  not  a  wrack  behind." 

A  volume  of  commentary  could  not  ex- 
haust the  meaning  of  these  words,  which 
seem  to  unfold  before  the  mind's  eye  a 
vast  panorama  of  ail  the  pomp,  pride, 
and  power  of  the  world  hasting  to  the 
'*  inevitable  hour  "  of  nothingness.  For 
a  vivid  illustration  of  the  poet's  power  of 


Music  and  the  Other  Arts.      33 


I  •' 


bringing  into  close  relationship  things 
that  to  the  ordinary  mind  have  nothing 
in  common,  read  Browning's  poem  on 
A  Toccata  of  Galuppts,  In  this  quaint 
music  the  poet's  eye  sees,  as  in  the  magic 
crystal  of  the  wizard,  the  whole  life  of 
Venice,  with  its  intrigues  and  vanities, 
reflected. 

The  subject-matter  of  Painting  is  form 
and  color.  Being  limited  to  a  flat  sur- 
face, the  painter  is  compelled  to  express 
in  two  dimensions  the  forms  which  in  the 
material  world  have  three  dimensions. 
This  he  does  by  applying  to  them  the 
laws  of  perspective.  But,  as  all  these 
laws  may  be  fulfilled  as  completely  in  a 
pen-  or  pencil-drawing  as  in  a  painting,  the 
painter  may  say  with  some  justice  that 
color  is  of  greater  moment  to  him  than 
form  or  drawing — although  it  is  almost 
valueless  without  the  latter.     Just  as  in 

Poetry  the  poet  has  the  whole  experience 
3 


fl 


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( 


\M 


!(^ 


0 


u 


'  li 


34     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 

and  observation  of  the  race  to  draw  upon, 
so,  in  Painting,  the  painter  has  the  whole 
visible  creation  to  draw  upon  for  his  pic- 
tures. But,  if  he  be  a  painter  worthy  of 
the  name,  he  looks  on  the  visible  creation 
with  far  different  eyes  from  those  of  ordi- 
nary mortals.  As  the  poet  sees  hidden  re- 
lations in  ideas,  so  the  painter  sees  in  form 
and  color  hidden  relations  to  which  ordi- 
nary vision  is  blind.  A  celebrated  painter 
used  to  say,  "  Leaves  may  be  green,  but 
trees  never  are,"  To  the  ordinary  ob- 
server this  may  sound  absurd,  but  care- 
fully examine  a  landscape  under  the 
guidance  of  an  artist  and  the  statement 
will  be  found  to  be  true.  Distance,  light, 
shade,  atmosphere,  so  modify  the  masses 
of  foliage  that  grays  and  purples  actually 
predominate  over  the  greens. 

Still,  as  perfect  command  of  language 
and  versification  will  not  make  a  poet,  so 
perfect  command  of  the  technic  of  form 


Music  and  the  Other  Arts.      35 

and  color  will  not  make  a  painter.  There 
must  needs  be  that  mysterious  thing  we 
call  genius,  which  no  one  has  defined 
and  no  one  ever  will  define.  It  belongs 
not  to  the  things  that  may  be  weighed, 
measured,  or  numbered ;  yet  its  strange 
power  may  be  felt  by  even  the  dullest.  It 
"  Cometh  not  by  observation  " ;  no  one 
can  say  of  it,  *'  Lo!  here,  or  lo!  there  "  ; 
even  to  its  fortunate  possessor  it  is  often 
unknown.  Through  some  impulse,  he 
knows  not  what,  he  does  his  work,  and 
awakes  some  morning  to  find  himself  fa- 
mous ;  while  the  world  takes  his  work  to 
its  heart  and  forever  holds  it  as  one  of  its 
most  cherished  possessions. 

Some  thirty  or  forty  centuries  ago  an 
unknown  Eastern  poet  summed  up  the 
monotheistic  conception  of  the  relations 
between  man  and  his  Creator;  and  the 
story  of  Job  remains  for  all  time  the  most 
perfect  and  the  loftiest  expression  of  these 


M 


[.I 


/? 


Pl 


: 


ii^i 


m 


'i 


36     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 

conceptions.  About  the  same  time  a 
wandering  Greek  poet  summed  up  the 
Aryan,  polytheistic  conception  of  the  re- 
lations between  man,  the  universe,  and 
his  fellow-man ;  and  the  Iliad  lives  to  this 
day,  although  the  conceptions  on  which 
it  was  founded  have  vanished.  The 
genius  of  these  two  poets  "  mirrored  the 
universe"  as  it  existed  for  them;  their 
work  was  not  "  make  believe  "  or  "  art 
for  art's  sake,"  but  was  wrought  from 
their  profoundest  convictions ;  therefore  it 
endures. 

We  have  no  means  of  judging  of  the 
excellence  of  the  paintings  of  the  old- 
world  artists,  but  it  is  safe  to  assume 
that  it  did  not  reach  the  high  plane  that 
was  occupied  by  their  sculpture  and 
architecture.  The  story  of  the  rival 
painters,  one  of  whom  painted  a  bunch 
of  grapes  so  well  as  to  deceive  the  birds, 
and  was  himself  deceived  by  the  curtain 


Music  and  the  Other  Arts.      37 

painted  by  his  rival,  is  not  calculated  to 
give  us  an  exalted  opinion  of  the  way  in 
which  the  Greeks  looked  upon  the  paint- 
er's art.  It  is  to  the  Italy  of  the  four- 
teenth and  fifteenth  centuries  that  we 
must  look  for  the  culmination  of  this  art. 
Like  the  poets  just  mentioned,  these 
painters  put  great  thoughts  and  sincere 
beliefs  into  their  pictures  with  directness 
and  simplicity,  and  thereby  fixed  the 
standards  of  excellence  in  Painting  for  all 
time. 

The  art  of  Sculpture  deals  only  with 
form,  and,  in  its  highest  manifestation, 
only  with  the  human  form.  It  is  in  some 
respects  the  most  limited  of  the  Fine 
Arts ;  but  as  it  concentrates  attention  on 
form,  to  the  exclusion  of  all  other  con- 
siderations, it  is  the  most  exacting  of  the 
visual  arts  in  its  demand  for  absolute 
truth  in  the  forms  it  represents.  The 
great  period  of  Sculpture  occurred  at  a 


* 


',■[ 


Ill 

I 


I 

: 


! 


38     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 

time  when  there  was  every  opportunity 
for  studying  the  forms  of  the  most  beau- 
tiful race  that  ever  existed.  The  games 
of  the  stadium,  the  exercises  of  the  gym- 
nasium, furnished  a  daily  school  in  which 
were  trained  a  people  who  summed  up 
all  their  ideals  of  beauty  in  the  perfect 
human  form.  But,  as  in  Poetry  and 
Painting,  so  in  Sculpture  there  must  be 
the  **  informing"  light  of  genius,  else  it 
is  dead  and  worthless.  A  life-cast  of  a 
face  will  reproduce  every  smallest  feature 
with  a  fidelity  beyond  the  reach  of  the 
artist,  yet  we  regard  it  with  little  or  no 
interest;  while  the  first  rough  impres- 
sion in  clay  of  the  same  face,  by  an  artist, 
will  possess  some  quality  which  appeals 
at  once  to  the  imagination.  It  is  as 
though  the  cast  gave  only  the  features, 
while  the  artist's  work  pictured  the  soul 
in  the  features. 

Turn  now  to  our  own  art,  Music.     Its 


f  I 


Music  and  the  Other  Arts.      39 


material  is  that  intangible  thing  we  call 
sound.  To  speak  more  exactly,  sound  is 
not  a  **  thing,"  but  is  simply  a  mode  of 
motion — so  insubstantial  is  the  material 
of  music.  As  to  its  subject-matter,  who 
will  pretend  to  say  what  it  is  ?  Who  will 
give  even  a  satisfactory  definition  of  mu- 
sic except  on  the  physical  side  ?  To 
say  that  music  is  the  combination  and 
succession  of  sounds  of  varying  pitch  and 
quality  is  as  inadequate  as  to  say  that 
In  Memoriam  is  a  succession  and  com- 
bination of  the  letters  of  the  alphabet. 
One  of  the  most  philosophic  of  modern 
writers  has  defined  music  as  '*  idealized 
motion."  This  has  some  appearance  of 
truth,  yet  it  is  hard  to  conceive  of  any  re- 
lation between  '*  motion,"  however  much 
idealized,  and  the  rush  of  "  thoughts  that 
lie  too  deep  for  tears,"  which  music  can 
evoke. 

All  other  arts  find  both  their  material 


\i 


^ 


ii! 


I 


I 


40     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 

and  their  subject-matter  ready  at  hand. 
But  although  nature  is  full  of  sounds, 
not  one  of  these  natural  sounds,  save  his 
own  voice,  is  available  for  the  musical 
use  of  man.  To  supply  this  need,  he  in- 
vented the  pipe,  the  reed,  the  string. 
Then  he  had  to  reduce  these  sounds  to 
order  and  system,  in  modes  and  scales; 
then  to  discover,  after  long  experiment- 
ing, how  to  combine  these  sounds,  and 
to  make  the  combinations  succeed  one 
another  agreeably;  last  of  all,  to  invent 
the  forms  in  which  to  mould  his  sound 
constructions.  To  what  end  ?  What  do 
they  mean  ?  The  mystery  of  music  is 
insoluble.  Hear  what  Browning,  the 
greatest  of  modern  poets, — indeed,  the 
only  great  poet  who  has  written  under- 
standingly  of  music, — says,  in  the  words 
he  puts  into  the  mouth  of  Abt  Vogler,  as 
he  sitT  absorbed  in  revery  after  extem- 
porizing on  his  organ : 


Music  and  the  Other  Arts.      41 

"  .     .     .     Had  I  painted  the  whole, 
Why,  then  it  had  stood  to  see,  nor  the  pro- 
cess so  wonderworth  ; 
Had  I  written  the  same,   made  verse — still, 

effect  proceeds  from  cause  : 
Ye  know  why  the  forms  are  fair,  ye  hear  how 
the  tale  is  told. 


% 


■I 


But  here  is  the  finger  of  God,  a  flash  of  the 

will  that  can. 
Existent  behind  all  laws,  that  made  them — 

and  lo  !  they  are  : 
And  I  know  not  if,  save  in  this,  such  gift  be 

allowed  to  man. 
That   out  of  three  sounds  he  frame,  not  a 

fourth  sound,  but  a  star  ; 
Coi  sider  it  well :  each  tone  of  our  scale  in 

itself  is  naught  ; 
It  is  everywhere  in  the  world — loud,  soft,  and 

all  is  said ; 
Give  it  to  me  to  use  !     I  mix  it  with  two  in 

my  thought 
And,  there  !     Ye  have  heard  and  seen,  con- 
sider and  bow  the  head." 

It   is    only  when    this    last    stage    is 
reached,  viz.,  the  development  of  Form, 


M 


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■.  I 


I      I 


i( 


42     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 

that  any  definite  relation  may  be  perceived 
between  Music  and  the  other  arts.  If 
there  is  any  one  principle  that  underlies 
all  the  arts  it  is  that  proportion  between 
the  parts,  that  due  subjection  of  subsidi- 
ary themes  to  the  principal  theme,  that 
freedom  from  diffuseness,  which  charac- 
terizes in  the  most  striking  way  every 
great  work  of  art.  Hence  the  term  **  Com- 
position "  is  used  in  all  the  arts  to  signify 
the  way  in  which  the  artist  presents  his 
subject. 

Every  work  of  art  has  certain  necessary 
limitations.  The  great  poem  of  human 
action  and  passion  began  with  the  crea- 
tion of  man,  and  goes  on  forever.  It  is 
only  here  and  there  that  the  poet  can  dip 
into  the  mighty  river  and  snatch  some 
spoil  from  oblivion.  So  from  sunrise  to 
sunset,  through  change  of  seasons,  the 
sun  spreads  an  endless,  ever-changing 
picture  before  the  painter's  eye,  while  his 


Music  and  the  Other  Arts.      43 


rapid  pencil  can  hardly  seize  one  feature 
before  it  vanishes.  Hence  in  compari- 
son with  what  is  possible  in  art,  what  is 
accomplished  is  almost  nothing.  There- 
fore, to  avoid  being  lost  in  the  infinite 
variety  of  nature,  the  artist  has  devised 
forms  in  which  to  present  his  work,  that 
it  may  have  the  quality  of  completeness. 
The  arrangement  or  determination  of  this 
form  is  called  —  as  just  remarked  —  the 
composition. 

A  Shakesperian  drama,  for  example,  is 
not  biographical ;  it  does  not  give  the  life- 
history  of  its  chief  character,  but  only  one 
point  in  that  life, — what  may  be  called 
the  crisis  of  that  life.  The  composition 
of  the  play  is  such,  that  every  subsidiary 
character  and  event  is  so  contrived  as  to 
throw  into  strongest  relief  the  fate  of  the 
chief  actors,  and  to  contribute  in  due  de- 
gree to  the  shaping  of  that  fate.  So  in 
the  Idyls  of  the  King, — although  loosely 


V 


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i 


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1 


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44     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 

strung  together, — we  see  the  doom  that 
is  to  overtake  the  "blameless  king"; 
and  each  successive  Idyl  seems  to  deepen 
the  gloom  in  which  the  fair  promise  of  the 
Round  Table  ends. 

Composition  in  painting  presents  one  of 
the  most  difficult  problems  the  artist  has 
to  solve.  He  must  so  arrange  his  groups, 
his  lights  and  shadows,  his  scheme  of 
color,  that  there  shall  be  no  jarring  note 
in  his  work.  His  picture  must  be  domi- 
nated by  one  main  idea ;  yet  this  domina- 
tion must  not  be  so  complete  as  to  cause 
the  rest  of  the  picture  to  fall  out  of  sight. 
Da  Vinci's  celebrated  picture  of  the  Last 
Supper  is  often  quoted  as  a  masterly 
example  of  composition.  At  the  first 
glance  there  appears  to  be  an  unstudied 
arrangement  of  the  group,  but  closer  at- 
tention reveals  the  fact  that  the  heads 
of  the  disciples  are  grouped  in  threes,  and 
the  grouping  is  so  contrived  as  to  throw  the 


Music  and  the  Other  Arts.      45 


figure  of  the  Savior  into  striking  promi- 
nence, and  that  of  Judas  into  deep  shade. 
If  composition  is  difficult  in  Painting  it 
is  a  hundredfold  more  so  in  Sculpture, 
confined  as  Sculpture  is  to  a  single  theme, 
and  that  theme  the  human  body ;  which, 
while  it  may  assume  a  great  many  poses, 
has  but  a  limited  number  that  possess  the 
element  of  beauty.  In  portrait  statuary 
the  composition  is  especially  difficult,  for 
the  artist  must  so  pose  the  subject  as  to 
avoid  the  commonplace  without  verging 
on  the  theatric.  In  a  certain  city,  which 
shall  be  nameless,  there  are  two  full-length 
statues  of  a  much  esteemed  citizen,  long 
since  departed,  which  illustrate  the  two 
extremes:  one  looks  as  though  he  had 
been  **  straked  **  for  burial  when  he  sat 
for  the  portrait  ;  the  other  is  very  much 
alive,  but  with  that  accentuation  or  ex- 
aggeration in  the  pose  that  we  are  ac- 
customed to  see  on  the  stage  (where  it  is 


' 

I 


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II 


f 


I  i. 


■I   I     'i 


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46     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 

absolutely  necessary),  and   to  which  we 
apply  the  epithet  "  stagey." 

In  Music  the  term  *'  composition  "  has 
a  twofold  meaning.  In  its  primary  sense 
it  means  the  invention  of  a  melody,  or 
the  fitting  of  this  melody  with  harmonic 
or  contrapuntal  accompaniment.  In  its 
larger  sense  its  meaning  is  analogous  to 
that  which  it  bears  in  the  other  arts.  In 
this  sense  it  means  the  order,  the  key  re- 
lation, succession,  contrast,  and  develop- 
ment of  the  themes  that  make  up  the 
content  of  an  extended  movement.  When 
these  conditions  are  fulfilled  we  get  the 
same  impression  of  completeness,  balance, 
and  coherence  that  we  get  from  the  well 
composed  drama,  picture,  or  statue.  We 
thus  find  that  all  the  arts,  although  start- 
ing from  different  points,  dealing  with 
dissimilar  materials,  and  differing  totally 
in  subject-matter,  meet  at  last  on  this 
common  ground  of  /arm  or  composition. 


Music  and  the  Other  Arts.      47 


,} 


In  Painting,  the  forms  are  infinite  in 
number — every  field  and  grove,  every 
chance  group  of  people,  offering  fresh 
possibilities.  Poetry  has  many  forms  and 
an  inherent  capability  for  the  development 
of  new  ones.  But  in  Music  the  forms  are 
very  few  and  of  singular  rigidity.  As 
yet,  all  attempts  to  develop  or  invent  new 
forms  have  been  unsuccessful. 

United  as  are  the  arts  by  this  physical 
bond,  as  it  might  be  called,  of  form  or 
composition,  they  are  still  more  closely 
drawn  together  by  a  deeper,  more  im- 
portant principle,  one  which  may  be  felt 
but  cannot  be  described ;  namely,  artistic 
truth.  It  is  on  this  principle  that  the 
permanence  of  any  work  of  art  depends. 
Sooner  or  later  the  world  recognizes  the 
truth  of  a  work  of  art  if  it  possesses  any ; 
although  it  frequently  happens  that  great 
artists,  like  prophets,  speak  to  future 
generations.    Time  is  the  sole  test  of  this 


I 


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i7?= 


1 1 


/I 


48     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 


rt 


il; 


m 


I 


Ml 


I 


artistic  truth.  Time,  that  should  be  rep- 
resented with  a  sieve  rather  than  a  scythe, 
winnows  out,  slowly  but  surely,  the  chaff 
that  makes  so  large  a  part  of  all  human 
effort,  carefully  saving  the  few  precious 
grains.  Time  eliminates  the  personal 
equation  from  the  artist's  work,  thus  dis- 
tinguishing what  is  accidental  or  charac- 
teristic of  his  age  from  what  is  essential, 
which  belongs  to  all  ages. 

The  creative  artist  is  rarely,  if  ever, 
conscious  of  the  manner  in  which  this 
principle  works  in  guiding  him.  Nor  is 
he  always  sure  that  he  hears  its  warnings 
aright.  False  sentiment,  exaggeration, 
or  the  glitter  that  simulates  gold  occasion- 
ally ensnare  the  greatest.  Yet  withal, 
every  great  work  of  art  calls  out  an  ele- 
vation of  soul,  a  belief  in  truth  and  good- 
ness, that  stamps  it  as  an  emanation  from 
the  source  of  all  truth  and  goodness. 
Thus,  also,  every  great  work  gives  con- 


I 


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1 


f 


Music  and  the  Other  Arts.      49 

elusive  proofs  that,  among  the  aids  to  the 
education  of  the  race,  none  are  entitled 
to  rank  higher  than  the  Fine  Arts,  when 
pursued  with  due  subjection  to  the  higher 
considerations  of  the  Moral  Law. 

"Art  for  art's  sake,"  to  which  I  re- 
cently alluded,  is  a  phrase  current  in  many 
quarters,  and  held  by  many  to  embody 
the  **  whole  duty  "  of  the  artist.  But,  as 
it  teaches  the  exaltation  of  Art  at  the  ex- 
pense of  things  of  greater  moment,  the 
tendency  of  this  teaching  is  surely  mis- 
chievous. Substitute  **  Art  for  human- 
ity's sake  "  ;  then  Art  becomes  a  precious 
boon  to  the  world,  while  in  the  former 
case  it  is  apt  to  result  in  that  state  of  soul 
portrayed  by  Tennyson  in  the  Palace 
of  Arty  that  selfish  indifference  to  all 
claims,  human  or  divine,  that  finds  ex- 
pression in  the  words : 

"  I  take  possession  of  Man's  mind  and  deed. 
I  care  not  what  the  sects  may  brawl. 


\ 


\ 


H 


'•  r 
■  I 


y>s 


•i 


u 


'  I 


m 


iq^! 


50     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 

I  sit  as  God  holding  no  form  of  Creed 
But  contemplating  all." 

In  that  Book  which  is  the  storehouse 
whence  all  wisdom  is  drawn,  there  are 
two  sayings  which  may  direct  us  with  un- 
failing certainty  in  our  attitude  towards 
Art,  as  towards  all  other  things.  The 
first  is,  "  Whatsoever  thy  hand  findeth 
to  do,  do  it  with  thy  might  " ;  in  this  is 
inculcated  the  earnestness  and  diligence 
that  our  duty  to  the  world  demands.  The 
other  is,  **  Do  all  things  to  the  glory  of 
God." 


1 


CHAPTER  III. 


THE   PLACE   OF  ART   IN  EDUCATION. 


THE  first  thing  necessary  in  attempt- 
ing to  determine  the  place  of  Art  in 
education  is,  a  clear  conception  of  what 
education  means.  Education  is  often 
confounded  with  training;  but  properly 
considered,  training,  however  necessary 
and  indispensable  it  may  be,  is  a  process 
much  inferior  to  education.  Training 
deals  with  the  specialty  which  is  meant 
to  be  the  life-work  of  the  recipient.  Edu- 
cation is  meant  to  make  the  life  itself  one 
worth  living.  Special  training  may,  and 
too  often  does,  exist  side  by  side  with  the 
narrowest,  meanest   conception  of   what 

51 


[ 


52     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 

life  ought  to  be.  The  specialist  ever  has 
a  tendency  to  grow  into  the  belief  that 
his  specialty  is  the  one  thing  in  the  uni- 
verse to  which  all  other  things  are  second- 
ary. I  am  afraid  that  the  common  report 
that  we  musicians  are  inclined  to  think 
thus  of  music  has  a  good  deal  of  truth  be- 
hind it. 

But  the  mere  gathering  of  knowledge  is 
only  a  small  part  of  education.  Educa- 
tion does  not  come  from  without,  but 
from  within.  It  is  but  another  name 
for  wisdom ;  its  highest  manifestation  'u 
that  power  of  dispassionate,  unprejudiced 
thinking  which,  seeing  all  things  in  their 
true  relations,  enables  its  possessor  to 
rightly  adjust  his  life  to  the  moral,  men- 
tal, and  physical  laws  that  make  up  his 
environment.  These  adjustments,  even 
of  the  wisest,  always  fall  far  short  of  com- 
pleteness, for  the  reason  that  universal 
knowledge  is  an  absolute  requisite  to  per- 


Art  in  Education. 


53 


feet  wisdom ;  yet  even  as  knowledge  may 
exist  without  wisdom,  so  wisdom  may 
exist  without  knowledge.  The  most  un- 
lettered man,  who  orders  his  life  accord- 
ing to  his  light,  may  be  the  possessor  of 
a  wisdom  far  surpassing  that  of  the  most 
learned  savant  who  sets  at  defiance  the 
plain  laws  of  right  conduct  and  moral 
living.  But  as  the  chief  object  of  educa- 
tion is  to  enable  us  to  form  more  and 
more  correct  conceptions  of  the  duties 
that  our  environment  devolves  on  us,  it 
is  evident  that  the  wisdom  of  the  edu- 
cated man  must  lea  more  valuable  pos- 
session to  the  world  than  that  of  the 
illiterate  man.  The  wisdom  of  the  one 
may  suffice  for  his  own  guidance;  that  of 
the  other  becomes  a  guide  for  others  to 
follow. 

It  is  the  business  of  training  to  seize  on 
whatever  special  aptitude  the  individual 
may   possess   and   make   of   it   the   tool 


!: 


54     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 


) 


i\^ 


m 


> ', 


h^ 


1.  1 


ri 


i  4 


;i 


wherewith  he  can  do  his  share  of  the 
world's  work.  But  if  education  does  not 
proceed  step  by  step  with  this  training, 
the  man  becomes  merged  in  the  tool,  and 
fatally  misses  the  highest  uses  of  life ;  low, 
sordid  aims  gradually  drive  out  every 
generous,  lofty  aspiration,  and  the  life 
that  was  given  to  be  a  ItgAt  becomes  the 
mere  fuel  that  drives  the  machine,  until 
its  cranks  and  wheels  are  stopped  by 
death. 

A  scheme  of  education,  to  be  valuable, 
must  take  into  account  the  whole  of  the 
complex  nature  of  the  human  animal, 
moral,  mental,  emotional,  and  physical. 
There  is  not  one  of  these  qualities  that 
has  not,  at  some  period  of  the  world's 
history,  been  considered  as  the  onfy  basis 
on  which  to  build  up  education.  Nor 
has  there  ever  been  a  system  of  education 
based  on  one,  to  the  exclusion  of  the 
others,   that   has   not   proven   a   failure. 


Art  in  Education. 


55 


Even  morals,  undoubtedly  the  most  im- 
portant department,  will  not  serve  alone 
as  a  basis  for  education.  The  most  hope- 
ful sign  of  the  new  pfdagogy  is,  that  it 
thoroughly  recognizes  this  complexity, 
and  bases  its  whole  system  of  procedure 
on  this  recognition.  Granting  this,  the 
next  step  is  to  inquire,  to  which  of  these 
attributes — moral,  mental,  emotional,  or 
physical — does  Art  make  its  special  ap- 
peal ?  I  say  special  appeal  because  there 
is  no  such  thing  as  an  appeal  to  one  of 
them  to  the  total  exclusion  of  the  others. 
The  human  mind,  with  all  its  diversity 
of  endowment,  is  a  unit;  it  cannot  be 
touched  at  one  point  without  giving  a 
response  from  all  in  greater  or  less  degree ; 
still,  each  department  responds  in  a  special 
degree  to  special  stimuli.  Without  ques- 
tion Art  makes  its  first  appeal  to  the 
emotional  nature;  next,  to  the  mental; 
in   lesser  degree  to  the   moral  (all  Art 


I'l 


1 


i 


i.' 


] 


if 


1  i 


! 


I! 


56     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 

is,  abstractedly  considered,  simply  un- 
moral); and  least  of  all  to  the  physical. 
Looking  at  a  great  painting,  the  first  im- 
pulse is  to  accept  and  admire,  to  sympa- 
thize with  the  artist.  Then  the  critical 
faculties  are  aroused.  We  ask  w/ijy  has 
he  done  so  and  so,  and  look  to  see  /low. 
Then,  if  the  picture  be  of  a  kind  to  have 
any  moral  bearing,  this  phase  of  it  de- 
mands our  attention.  The  physical  effects 
are  slight  and  obscure,  but  none  the  less 
real;  the  quickening  of  the  pulse,  the 
sudden  tension  of  the  nerves,  may  not  be 
noticed,  but  the  physiologist  knows  they 
are  there. 

It  is  well  known  that  the  emotions  are 
the  most  rebellious  part  of  our  mental 
make-up ;  the  most  difficult  to  bring  under 
the  control  of  the  will.  That  being  so,  it 
would  appear  that  this  was  the  place 
where  education  should  make  its  first  at- 
tack.    Here  again  has  modern  pedagogy 


if 


Art  in  Education. 


57 


displayed  its  wisdom.  Time  was,  when 
educators  looked  on  the  emotions  as  dan- 
gerous wild  animals,  to  be  crushed  or  de- 
stroyed at  all  hazards ;  with  the  inevitable 
result  that,  like  a  pent-up  torrent,  they 
broke  loose  and  swept  away  every  men- 
tal, moral,  and  physical  barrier.  Just 
here  we  are  confronted  by  a  question  of 
fundamental  importance.  What  must  be 
the  character  of  an  art  to  make  of  it  a 
suitable  means  to  train  and  develop  the 
emotions,  without  destroying  the  balance 
between  them  and  the  moral  and  mental 
faculties  ?  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  say 
that  everything  that  is  obnoxious  to  pure 
morality  should  be  rigorously  excluded. 
It  is  one  of  the  saddest  facts  in  the  history 
of  the  arts  that  there  is  not  one  of  them 
that  has  not  been  ...ade  a  pander  to  vice 
—  Poetry,  Painting,  and  Sculpture  by 
direct  incentive,  and  Music  by  being 
forced   into   connection  with  evil  words 


II 


i 


1 


f 


i\ 

i 


11:; 


I 


58     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 

and  actions.  It  is  this  that  has  made  so 
many  of  the  wisest  and  purest  of  men 
decry  the  study  and  the  practice  of  Art 
in  any  form;  forgetting  or  ignoring  the 
other  fact,  that  the  love  for  Art  is  one  of 
the  deepest  of  human  instincts,  and  that 
the  part  of  true  wisdom  is  to  rescue  it 
from  base  associations  and  make  it  what 
it  ought  to  be, — the  purest  of  pleasures 
and  the  most  winning  of  instructors. 

Next  in  importance  to  the  moral,  comes 
the  mental  aspect  of  Art.  It  is  quite  pos- 
sible for  Art  to  be  unexceptionable  as  to 
morals,  and  yet  utterly  wanting  in  intel- 
lectual qualities.  Such  a  form  of  art  is 
called  sensuous,  and  it  is  one  of  the  most 
dangerous  forms.  Appealing  as  it  does 
to  the  emotions,  while  the  moral  and  in- 
tellectual faculties  are  untouched,  it  works 
like  an  insidious  poison ;  exalting  emotion 
until  it  overrides  both  the  moral  and  men- 
tal faculties.     The  art  that  rises  above 


Art  in  Education. 


59 


this  must  be  such  as  to  demand  an  active, 
not  a  passive,  receptivity.  The  mind 
must  be  aroused  by  it  to  observe  the 
**  why  "  and  the  **  how,"  not  in  the  tech- 
nical sense,  but  in  accordance  with  that 
deeper  principle  of  which  I  have  spoken. 
It  must  look  for  the  artistic  truth,  as  re- 
vealed in  the  form,  in  the  self-restraint, 
in  the  avoidance  of  false  sentiment  or 
meretricious  display ;  above  all  in  the  evi- 
dence that  serious  thinking  was  brought 
to  the  making  of  the  work. 

Technical  training  is  not  by  any  means 
essential  to  the  right  apprehension  of  a 
work  of  art  in  this  sense.  There  are 
multitudes  who  cannot  write  a  verse,  or 
draw  an  outline,  or  compose  one  bar  of 
music,  who  are  keenly  alive  to  the  highest 
excellences  of  a  poem,  a  picture,  or  a 
symphony.  These  are  they  who  are  edu- 
cated in  Art. 

Although  the  emotions  are  the  paths 


1  I 


\{\ 


4, 


Til! 


60     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 


through  which  the  Arts  enter  our  con- 
sciousness, they  also  affect  all  the  other 
mental  attributes,  though  in  very  differ- 
ent degree.  Poetry,  dealing  as  it  does 
with  the  experiences  of  the  race,  makes 
the  strongest  appeal  to  the  moral  sense ; 
so  much  so  that  its  emotional  and  in- 
tellectual aspects  are  often  forgotten  in 
the  strength  of  this  appeal.  Then,  as 
Poetry  works  with  language,  it  can  give  a 
precision  and  definiteness  to  its  concep- 
tions that  are  entirely  wanting  in  the  other 
arts.  It  is  this  which  makes  poetry  the 
most  potent  vehicle  in  the  world  for  con- 
veying moral  instruction.  It  has  been 
the  means  of  the  loftiest  teaching,  from 
the  utterances  of  prophets  and  psalmists 
to  the  simple  rhymes  that  are  among  the 
chief  agencies  for  training  the  moral  facul- 
ties of  little  children. 

It  is  just  at  this  point  that  Music  steps 
in  as  an  aid  to  moral  culture.     In  itself, 


'>: 


Art  in  Education. 


6i 


music  is  neither  moral  nor  immoral ;  it  is 
only  by  association  that  it  becomes  so. 
But  with  its  well-known  power  for  inten- 
sifying and  heightening  the  effect  of 
whatever  may  be  linked  to  it,  and  espe- 
cially of  the  words  to  which  it  may  be 
joined,  music  may  be  made  a  powerful 
aid  to  moral  training.  I  suppose  there  is 
nothing  that  clings  with  such  tenacity  to 
the  memory,  even  in  extreme  old  age, 
as  the  songs  learned  in  childhood.  Who 
then  can  tell  what  good  or  evil  results 
may  follow,  according  as  these  songs  are 
good  or  evil !  These  words  grow  to  be  a 
part  of  a  child's  nature,  consciously  or 
unconsciously  influencing  the  whole  after 
life.  Hence  if  there  is  any  one  thing  that 
demands  the  watchful  care  of  those  who 
have  in  charge  the  musical  training  of 
children,  it  is  that  the  words  sung  shall 
be  such  that  chey  may  leave  no  shadow 
of  evil  effect.     This  is  the  only  way  to 


i\ 


I 


.^1 


III 


, 


62      Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 

stem  the  tide  of  vulgarity  in  the  shape  of 
variety  theatre  songs  that  are  constantly 
being  poured  out  and  caught  up  by  chil- 
dren ;  too  often  with  the  direct  encourage- 
ment of  foolish  elders,  who  find  something 
**  smart  "  in  hearing  the  nasty,  slangy 
words  from  the  mouths  of  children  inno- 
cent of  their  meaning. 

Painting  makes  a  very  strong  appeal  to 
the  emotions,  and  an  almost  equally 
strong  appeal  to  the  intellect.  As  the 
moral  quality,  apart  from  the  choice  of  a 
subject,  is  entirely  absent,  the  critical 
faculty  is  left  unimpeded  in  its  action. 
Visual  impressions  are  the  most  sharply 
defined  of  all  our  impressions ;  hence  the 
easiest  to  correct,  provided  the  eye  has 
been  taught  to  see  correctly — a  point  to 
which  I  will  advert  shortly. 

We  may,  therefore,  safely  conclude  that 
the  chief  function  of  Art  in  education  is 
to  train  the  emotions  in  accordance  with 


Art  in  Education. 


63 


the  dictates  of  the  intellect,  but,  above 
all,  in  subjection  to  the  moral  law  and  the 
will.  The  will  is  the  supreme  arbiter  in 
the  concourse  of  mental  faculties.  If  the 
education  of  the  emotions  has  been  such 
that  they  look  to  the  intellect  for  guid- 
ance ;  if  the  education  of  the  intellect  has 
been  such  that  it  looks  to  the  moral  law 
for  guidance ;  and  if  the  will  has  learned 
to  merge  itself  in  the**  Eternal  Will,"  the 
result  will  be  in  the  highest  sense  an  edu- 
cated life, — a  life,  as  nearly  as  human 
imperfection  will  allow,  in  harmonious 
adjustment  with  its  environment. 

Hitherto  we  have  been  considering  the 
place  of  Art  in  education  in  a  general 
way.  It  will  be  well  to  adduce  some  con- 
siderations of  its  value  as  a  means  of 
training.  Not  that  amount  of  training 
which  is  necessary  to  make  the  specialist, 
but  that  which  is  sufficient  to  give  the 
recipient   an   insight   into   its  aims  and 


T  i 


I- 

m 


I 


11 


li 


; 


L 

112 


64     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 

methods,  and  serve  the  purposes  of  mental 
training. 

To  train  and  develop  the  mind  no 
study  is  comparable  to  literature,  yet  he 
who  is  educated  only  in  literature  has  but 
a  partial,  one-sided  training,  and  is  shut 
out  from  many  pleasant  fields  bright  with 
the  flowers  of  human  effort.  It  has  be- 
come too  much  the  fashion  in  our  hurried, 
grasping  modern  life  to  decry  all  kinds  of 
study  that  do  not  bear  directly  upon  in- 
creasing the  efficiency  of  the  individual 
in  the  struggle  for  wealth,  place,  or 
power.  Especially  has  the  scorn  of  many 
been  directed  against  the  study  of  the 
world's  great  literatures.  It  is  a  sufficient 
answer  to  these  objections  to  read  over 
the  roll  of  the  great  names  of  those  who 
have  changed  the  course  of  events  and 
molded  the  history  of  the  world,  yet 
who  derived  their  sole  training  from  the 
study  of  literature.     It  has  been  well  said, 


Art  in  Education. 


65 


that  there  is  no  estimating  the  power  of 
a  true  thought.  It  may  take  it  centuries 
to  bear  fruit,  but  it  is  sure  to  come  to 
its  full  and  complete  fruition,  which  no 
entrenchments  of  error  can  finally  retard. 
In  the  three  all-important  departments  of 
human  life,  three  peoples  have  each  con- 
tributed a  thought  that  has  borne  and 
will  forever  bear  fruit.  To  the  Hebrew 
the  world  owes  the  conception  of  pure  re- 
ligion ;  to  the  Greek,  the  development  of 
the  intellect ;  to  the  Roman,  the  concep- 
tion of  law  and  civil  polity.  Although 
these  three  nationalities  passed  away  long 
ago,  there  is  not  a  civilization  to-day, 
worthy  of  the  name,  that  does  not  owe 
its  existence  to  the  Hebrew,  the  Greek, 
and  the  Roman ;  none  that  does  not  draw 
its  perennial  inspiration  from  the  litera- 
tures of  these  three  great  peoples. 

Turn  now  to  the  pictorial  art.     What 

purpose    does    it   serve   as   a  means  of 

5 


66     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 


il 


training  ?  One,  certainly,  of  supreme 
importance.  It  teaches  us  to  see.  It  is 
wonderful  how  little  and  how  superficially 
we  see.  How  many  are  there  who  could 
draw,  with  any  approach  to  correctness, 
a  human  ear  ?  Yet  we  see  ears  almost 
every  moment  of  our  waking  lives.  A 
curious  illustration  of  the  lack  of  seeing 
aright  appeared  at  the  Centennial  Expo- 
sition. There  was  a  finely  carved  ox- 
head,  some  six  inches  long  ;  the  lips  were 
slightly  parted,  and  the  front  of  the  upper 
jaw  v^^s  full  of  teeth  I  Again,  how  many 
people  can  draw  from  memory  the  outline 
of  a  leaf? — no  matter  how  often  they  have 
seen  it.  Surely  if  seeing  aright  is  so  rare 
in  such  familiar  cases,  it  must  be  almost 
totally  wanting  when  unfamiliar  objects 
are  in  question ;  and  no  further  argument 
is  needed  to  prove  the  use  of  elemen^^^- 
training  in  drawing.  Here,  to^  m  .^ 
pedagogy  displays   its  wisdom.     I    h  ./e 


I 


Art  in  Education. 


visited  during  the  past  two  or  three  years 
many  public  schools  in  several  cities,  and 
have  always  been  pleased  to  see  simple 
outline  drawings  of  leaves,  flowers,  fruits, 
and  other  familiar  objects,  decorating  the 
walls  of  the  class  rooms. 

Last  of  all,  let  us  inquire  whether  Music 
furnishes  any  useful  kind  of  training.  We 
have  not  far  to  seek.  There  is  perhaps 
no  other  study  that  produces  such  a  state 
of  mental  alertness  as  singing  or  playing 
in  concert.  One  may  see  it  evidenced 
whenever  music  is  being  made,  from  the 
serious  attention  of  the  trained  artists  in 
a  great  orchestra,  to  the  bright,  eager 
faces  of  a  primary  school  class.  Quick- 
ness, watchfulness,  and  concentration 
are  surely  qualities  worth  cultivating. 
Another  useful  quality  developed  by  the 
study  of  music  is  concerted  action.  The 
necessity  of  forgetting  self  for  the  sake 
of   the   result   sought,  of  submission  to 


68     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 


Vi-  I 


I 


1 


authority,  when  the  authority  is  exercised 
for  our  good,  is  one  of  the  h-^rdest  lessons 
in  life  to  learn ;  yet  music  pleasantly  and 
persuasively  insists  on  it,  making  a  pleas- 
ure out  of  duty.  It  would  be  easy  to 
advance  still  other  claims  for  music  as  a 
means  of  training,  but  it  might  lessen  the 
effect  of  those  already  presented.  There 
are  still  further  ways  in  which  music  has 
advantages  not  possessed  by  the  other 
arts.  It  is,  for  instance,  the  social  art, 
par  excellence,  the  art  for  the  people. 
Great  paintings  require  long  purses  and 
rich  galleries,  but  a  company  of  a  hun- 
dred or  two  hundred  Pennsylvania  coal- 
miners  can  get  together  and  make  the 
lofty  choruses  of  Handel,  Haydn,  and 
Mendelssohn  their  own. 

These  discursive  remarks  about  Art  and 
education  are  meant  to  apply  altogether 
to  the  education  of  children.  Although 
education  goes  on  as  long  as  I'fe  lasts, 


Art  in  Education. 


69 


the  Art  education  of  adults  is  more  likely 
to  be  a  special  training  in  one  art  than  a 
general  survey  of  all.     It  may  seem  to 
some  that  the  views  here  given  are  too 
advanced  to  apply  to   the  education  of 
children.     But  it  should  never  be  forgot- 
ten that  the  best  is  none  too  good  where 
the  training  of  children  is  concerned ;  also 
that  simpHcity  is  not  inconsistent  with 
the  greatest  art,— is,  indeed,  one  of  its 
characteristics.     Even     if    some    of    the 
things  presented  to  the  child  are  beyond 
his  comprehension,  we  cannot  tell  what 
thinking    processes,  that  adults    cannot 
fathom,  may  be  set  agoing  in  the  little 
brain. 


\i 


lu 


I 


I 


i 


Hi 


i*  n 


'f 


^ 

:./i£?^ 

H 

K 

^JV^>^, 

Hi^^ 

CHAPTER  IV. 

THE   RELATION    BETWEEN  ART  AND 

RELIGION. 

THE  discussion  of  this  subject  in  any- 
thing like  an  adequate  manner  would 
far  exceed  our  present  limits.  I  shall 
therefore  have  tc  content  myself  with 
giving  you  a  sketch  merely;  my  main 
object  being  to  inquire  as  to  the  advant- 
ages of  this  connection,  both  to  Art  and 
to  Religion.  To  prevent  misconception, 
let  me  say  that  I  here  use  the  word 
Religion  in  its  generic  sense;  that  is,  as 
including  all  the  beliefs  or  quasi-beliefs 
which  men  may  profess. 

In  every  stage  of  civilization  we  find 

70 


Art  and  Religion. 


71 


Art  and  Religion  closely  united.  In  the 
earlier  stages  of  Art  this  is  preeminently 
true.  The  shapes  of  pottery,  the  colors 
and  patterns  of  its  decoration,  the  pat- 
terns woven  into  wearing  materials,  are  all 
symbolic  of  some  religious  or  quasi-religi- 
ous ideas.  The  development  of  Architec- 
ture owes  more  to  the  religious  idea  than 
to  any  of  the  more  practical  needs  of  man- 
kind. Men  were  satisfied  to  live  in  tents 
or  in  booths,  or  in  very  plain  houses,  as 
long  as  their  gods  and  goddesses  were 
housed  in  magnificent  temples.  Assum- 
ing, as  seems  probable,  that  Poetry  was 
the  first  art  to  come  into  existence,  and 
that  it  originated  in  the  rude  chant,  recit- 
ing the  deeds  of  the  ancestors  of  the  tribe, 
we  have  at  the  same  time  the  beginning 
of  Art  and  of  one  of  the  most  wide-spread 
of  savage  religions,  viz.,  ancestor  wor- 
ship. In  conjunction  with  this  ancestral 
worship   we  often  find   a   deification   of 


72     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 


natural  phenomena.  Sun,  wind,  rain,  and 
so  on,  become  objects  of  worship.  As 
another  step  in  advance,  we  find  abstract 
qualities  in  the  form  of  deities, — Hope, 
Fear,  Love,  Hate,  and  so  on.  The 
chant,  originally  the  story  of  the  prowess 
of  some  warrior  ancestor,  takes  a  milder 
form,  becoming  a  hymn  in  praise  of  the 
deified  force  or  abstract  quality.  It  often 
rises  to  forms  and  expressions  of  rare 
beauty,  as  though  the  author  got  occa- 
sional glimpses  of  the  great  truth,  that 
behind  all  these  forces  there  exists  a 
Power  who  has  set  them  in  motion  and 
controls  them. 

This  outline  of  the  development  of 
Religion  is  in  accord  with  that  generally 
given  by  anthropologists,  and  is  founded 
on  the  assumption  that  man  is  physically, 
mentally,  and  morally  the  result  of  a  pro- 
cess of  evolution.  Still,  the  fact  that 
religious   conceptions  appear   purer   the 


Art  and  Religion. 


73 


farther  back  we  go, — for  instance,  in  such 
old-world  creeds  as  the  Egyptian  and  the 
Assyrian,  and  in  the  Vedic  hymns, — would 
seem  to  make  the  contrary  assumption 
more  probable,  at  least  as  far  as  Religion  is 
concerned.  This  would  lend  color  to  the 
theory  that  Religion  was  the  result  of  a 
primitive  revelation  which  has  been  gradu- 
ally forgotten  and  debased  with  foreign 
admixture.  All  the  greatest  poetry  of 
antiquity  is  essentially  religious  poetry; 
that  is,  its  main  theme  is  the  relation  of 
man  to  the  universe,  to  his  God  or  gods, 
and  to  his  fellow-men.  The  Iliad,  the 
Odyssey y  the  great  tragedies  of  the  Greek 
stage,  are  all  meant  to  teach  right  living 
and  the  certainty  of  punishment  follow- 
ing evil-doing.  These  great  truths  they 
inculcate  with  a  purity  and  loftiness  sec- 
ond only  to  that  of  the  Bible.  It  is  only 
in  the  Bible,  however,  that  we  find  poetry 
used  as  the  vehicle  for  teaching  a  religion 


'f 


I 


74     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 


that  is  never  marred  by  the  cruelty, 
coarseness,  or  puerility  so  often  found  in 
the  greatest  of  the  heathen  writers. 

We  have  very  little  knowledge  of  the 
practice  of  Painting  among  the  ancients, 
or  of  the  estimation  in  which  this  art 
was  held  by  them.  Doubtless  the  repre- 
sentation of  objects  by  outlines  was  one 
of  the  earliest  attempts  at  art.  Witness 
that  drawing  of  a  mammoth,  made  (pos- 
sibly with  a  sharp  flake  of  flint)  on  a  piece 
of  his  tusk,  found  in  a  bone  cave  in 
France.  But  in  all  likelihood  the  first  use 
of  drawing  was  to  preserve  a  record  of 
important  events ;  for  these  pictorial  out- 
lines were  soon  conventionalized  into  syl- 
lables, then  into  alphabets.  The  oldest 
paintings  extant  are  those  found  on  the 
walls  of  temples  and  tombs  in  Egypt. 
With  few  exceptions  these  paintings 
represent  either  wars  or  banquets,  or  are 
curiously  minute  pictures  of  the  daily  avo- 


Art  and  Religion. 


75 


cations  of  the  people.  One  of  the  few 
religious  themes  pictured  is  the  judgment 
of  the  souls  of  the  dead  by  Osiris.  In- 
teresting as  these  pictures  are  historically, 
they  have  very  little  merit  as  works  of 
art,  because  the  rules  of  drawing  and 
coloring  seem  to  have  crystallized  at  a 
very  early  period  of  Egyptian  history  into 
stiff,  formal  conventions. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  art  of  Sculpture 
has  played  a  part  of  great  prominence 
in  nearly  every  ancient  religion.  There 
seems  to  be  a  strange  inherent  tendency 
in  man  to  worship  the  "  work  of  his  own 
hands."  It  has  been  accounted  for  on 
the  theory  that  the  idol  was  at  first 
merely  a  visible  symbol  of  the  deity, 
probably  like  the  Teraphim  that  Rachel 
carried  away  from  her  father  Laban. 
But  it  is  more  likely  to  be  an  outgrowth 
of  that  curious  mental  attitude  of  the 
savage  which  results  in  fetichism,  a  belief 


^ 


^; 


i'    1  > 


!) 


> 


\ 

i  1 


V^W\ 


■  J 


I  : 


I 


76     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 


! 


that  the  god  or  spirit  does  inhabit  the 
idol.  Be  this  as  it  may,  the  worship  is 
transferred  with  fatal  facility  from  the 
thing  symbolized  to  the  symbol.  Among 
savages,  and  among  many  of  the  nations 
of  antiquity,  ugliness  seems  to  have  been 
the  chief  requisite  in  an  idol.  But  the 
art-loving  Greeks  went  to  the  other  ex- 
treme, making  the  perfection  of  the 
human  form  and  face  the  ntost  fitting 
representative  of  their  deities.  The  art 
of  Sculpture  reached  its  perfection  in  the 
'*  age  of  Pericles,"  when,  as  was  said  by  a 
visitor  to  Athens,  there  were  **  more  gods 
and  goddesses  than  men  in  the  streets  of 
Athens.**  It  seems  like  a  confirmation 
of  the  fetichistic  origin  of  idols  when  we 
recall  that  the  **  great  Diana  of  the  Eph- 
esians  '*  was  a  shapeless  monstrosity,  and 
the  original  Aphrodite  a  rude,  conical 
mass  of  stone. 

There  are  two  significant  observations 


^ 


f 


Art  and  Religion. 


n 


on  the  history  of  Art,  the  truth  of  which 
is  confirmed  by  all  national  annals :  First, 
each  art,  Music  excepted,  has  reached  its 
highest  phase  of  development  when  it  has 
been  the  highest  expression  of  the  re- 
ligious belief  of  a  people.  Second,  na- 
tional decline  has  always  accompanied 
and  followed  the  blossoming  of  Art. 

History  confirms  this  by  showing  that 
the  nations  of  the  old  world  that  were 
the  conquering  peoples  were  never  at  the 
same  time  the  artistic  peoples.  These 
two  statements  taken  together  furnish 
much  matter  for  serious  reflection. 

The  explanation  is  this :  Religion  means 
duty,  right  living,  noble  action — as  much 
to  the  heathen  as  to  the  Christian;  not 
aesthetic  raptures  nor  excited  emotions 
that  expire  with  the  cause  that  gave  them 
birth.  "  Plain  living  and  high  thinking  " 
characterized  the  Medo-Persians  when 
they  swept  the  foul  Assyrian  Empire  out 


\ 


.)  ■ 


/l|^: 


I' 


? 


\ 


\ 


I 


1^ 


'j( 


'  ■     !   K 


78     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 

of  existence ;  and  the  Greeks,  when  they 
beat  back  theoe  same  Persians,  become 
corrupt  through  their  Assyrian  con- 
quests. It  was  the  virtue  (virtus)  of  the 
Romans,  their  religion,  their  lofty  ideas 
of  duty  and  patriotism  that  enabled  them 
to  conquer  the  world.  In  short,  it  is  the 
idea  a  people  form  of  right  living  that 
is  the  essence  of  their  religion,  not  the 
number  of  gods  and  goddesses  they  pro- 
fess to  worship.  It  is  to  the  same  truth 
that  St.  Paul  gives  expression  when  he 
refers  to  those  who  "  being  without  the 
law,  yet  do  by  nature  the  things  of  the 
law." 

When  Art  becomes  the  highest  expres- 
sion of  Religion,  it  is  a  sure  sign  that  all 
which  made  the  Religion  valuable  has 
evaporated. 

With  the  fall  of  the  Roman  Empire 
ancient  civilization  came  to  an  end  and 
modern  history  began,  bringing  with  it  a 


Art  and  Religion. 


79 


new  force  to  act  on  the  world, — the  force 
of  Christianity.  Christianity  came  off  the 
victor  in  its  contest  with  heathenism,  but 
suffered  more  from  its  victory  than  it  ever 
did  from  its  defeats.  Ease  and  affluence 
wrought  the  same  deadly  work  in  it  that 
they  had  wrought  in  Persia,  Greece,  and 
Rome;  and  had  it  not  been  that  Chris- 
tianity had  in  it  a  principle  of  h'fe  unknown 
to  these  ancient  civilizations,  it  would 
have  shared  the  same  fate. 

When  Christianity  was  poor  and  op- 
pressed it  knew  little  and  cared  less  about 
Art.  Nothing  can  seem  more  devoid  of 
Art  than  the  early  Christian  hymns,  when 
compared  with  the  dainty,  fantastic  me- 
tres of  Greek  and  Latin  poetry.  The  few 
pictorial  symbols  which  the  Christians 
used  were  of  the  simplest,  the  most  elabor- 
ate being  rude  drawings  of  the  Good  Shep- 
herd with  a  lamb  on  his  shoulders  or  in 
his  arms,  many  of  which  are  to  be  found 


^: 


n 


'•  i 


' 


II 


'•  1 


( 


I 


80     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 

in  the  Catacombs.  With  the  access  of 
power  and  wealth  a  great  change  came. 
The  first  art  to  receive  the  impulse  was 
Architecture.  True  to  that  instinct 
which  makes  man  build  temples  for  Him 
"  Who  dwelleth  not  in  temples  made 
with  hands,"  stupendous  cathedrals  and 
churches  began  to  spring  up.  New 
schools  of  architecture  were  invented, 
until  the  numerous  constructions  erected 
for  the  religion  founded  by  fishermen, 
taxgatherers,  and  tentmakers  far  out- 
shone the  costliest  of  heathen  temples. 

But,  in  proportion  as  the  ideals  of 
architecture  were  perfected,  the  ideals 
of  Christianity  declined;  until  the  awful 
climax  was  reached  when  the  greatest  of 
cathedrals  was  built  by  funds  raised  by 
peddling  **  indulgences  "  all  over  Europe. 
St.  Peter's  stands  to  this  day  a  monument 
of  the  genius  of  Angelo,  and  not  less 
a  monument  of  the  evil   case   in   which 


ii 


f '  I 


■f 


ii 


Art  and  Religion. 


8i 


Christianity  was  when  the  strong  wind  of 
the  Reformation  blew  away  the  mists  and 
miasms  that  had  settled  on  it. 

The  art  of  Painting  was  the  next  to 
arrive  at  its  full  perfection  under  the  fos- 
tering care  of  Religion.  We  can  hardly 
realize  with  what  force  the  pictured  repre- 
sentation of  Biblical  themes  must  have 
appealed  to  the  beholders  in  an  unlet- 
tered age.  As  the  painters  advanced  in 
skill  and  knowledge  these  great  altar- 
pieces  and  frescos  grew  more  and  more 
lifelike  and  impressive;  until  this  phase 
of  religious  art  culminated  in  the  great 
Italian  schools  of  the  fifteenth  and  six- 
teenth centuries. 

It  needs  but  a  glance  at  history  to  dis- 
cover what  was  the  manner  of  life  lived 
in  Europe  at  the  very  time  when  the 
great  painters  were  painting  their  Madon- 
nas, crucifixions,  annunciations,  and  all 
that  long  list  of  Biblical  pictures  which 


^; 


;; 


I  ! 


82      Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 


i 


J 


II. 
It 

k 


l\ 


' 


\i 


Hi 


remain  to  this  day  the  admiration  and 
despair  of  modern  artists.  Church  digni- 
tarias  and  nobles  vied  with  each  other  in 
doing  honor  to  the  painters  and  sculptors 
who  wrought  these  ideal  saints,  angels, 
and  martyrs.  But  this  was  the  age  of 
the  Borgias,  the  Sforzas,  the  Innocents; 
the  age  when  deeds  were  done  and  lives 
lived  chat  might  have  filled  Nero  and 
Tiberius  with  envy. 

The  art  of  Music  was  soon  recognized 
by  the  Church  as  one  of  the  most  power- 
ful aids  *n  the  great  ceremonies  of  public 
Worship,  and  was  sedulously  cultivated. 
Music  owes  a  great  debt  to  the  Church. 
For  nearly  twelve  centuries  there  is  not  a 
name  to  be  found  among  those  who  re- 
duced the  practice  of  music  to  an  intelli- 
gible system,  apart  from  the  studious 
monks  and  other  churchmen  who  devoted 
their  lives  to  its  study.  Their  labors  de- 
veloped a  kind  of  music  that  culminated 


Art  and  Religion. 


83 


in  the  works  of  Palestrina.  It  differed  es- 
sentially from  our  modern  music,  which 
began  with  Bach  and  Handel,  although 
sporadic  indications  of  its  advent  were 
not  wanting  before  the  appearance  of 
these  masters. 

The  discovery  that  music  was  a  means 
of  expressing  thought  and  emotion  which 
might  be  molded  into  great  "  art  forms  ** 
is  the  contribution  of  the  modern 
world  to  the  sisterhood  of  the  arts.  In 
comparison  with  it,  all  that  was  called 
music  from  the  beginning  of  time  sinks 
into  insignificance.  The  great  works 
which  saw  the  light  in  the  eighteenth 
century  and  in  the  first  half  of  the  nine- 
teenth, mark  the  point  when  the  tide  of 
musical  evolution  reached  its  flood.  I  do 
not  wish  to  be  understood  as  denying  all 
merit  to  older  church  music;  far  from  it. 
It  possessed  a  solidity  and  holcm -ity  that 
made  it  peculiarly  appropriate  to  religious 


I, 


.  > 


I 


'» 


i 

I 


J 


84     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 


J 


u« 


I  \ 


\h 


m 


ceremonies.  Only  as  a  perfected  **  art 
form  "  do  I  claim  superiority  for  modern 
music. 

Although  all  the  arts  owe  much  to  the 
fostering  care  of  the  Church,  Music  is  the 
only  one  that  has  in  any  great  degree 
repaid  the  debt.  Religion  could  get  on 
very  well  without  Architecture,  Sculpture, 
or  Painting ;  but,  from  the  time  when  its 
Founder  sang  a  hymn  with  His  disciples  at 
the  close  of  the  Last  Supper,  up  to  the 
present  day.  Music  has  been  the  most 
powerful  aid  tc  Christianity,  In  every 
occasion  of  sorrowing  or  rejoicing,  Music 
has  its  share  in  endless  variety,  from  the 
simplest  children*s  hymn  to  the  Passion 
Music  of  T^ach. 

A  general  survey  of  the  history  of  Art 
in  its  relation  to  Religion  might  seem  to 
justify  the  opinion  that  it  would  have 
been  better  for  Religion  if  they  had  always 
remained  apart ;  but  this  hasty  decision  is 


(H 


Art  and  Religion. 


85 


surely  erroneous.  The  love  of  beauty  in 
form,  color,  or  sound  is  one  of  the  deepest 
sentiments  implanted  in  the  human  mind. 
It  is  one  that  man,  in  whatever  condition 
of  savagery  or  civilization,  is  unwearied  in 
his  efforts  to  gratify.  This  gratification  is 
innocent  so  long  as  it  is  not  secured  at  the 
expense  of  weightier  matters.  It  is  more 
than  innocent,  it  is  useful  in  the  highest 
degree,  if  so  pursued  as  to  promote  the 
soul's  growth  in  these  weightier  matters. 
There  are  two  curious  facts  concerning 
the  relation  of  Music  to  Religion.  One  is, 
that  during  the  long  period  in  which  the 
other  arts  were  being  perfected,  aestheti- 
cally as  well  as  technically,  it  was  only 
the  technical  part  of  Music  that  grew. 
The  other  is,  that  though  the  gradual  de- 
clension of  religious  ideals  did  not  affect 
the  aesthetic  development  of  the  other 
arts,  it  did  affect  that  of  Music.  The 
plain  severity  of  the  old  modes  proving 


V 

V 

I 


t  > 


I 


86     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 


t 


Hi 


I  .^  - 

a' 

6'f 


hi 


'•i 


i^ 


. 


distasteful,  popular  songs  were  taken  as 
the  themes  for  church  compositions.  It 
would  seem  as  though  the  art  of  Music, 
lying,  as  it  does,  nearer  to  Religion  than 
any  other  art,  was  bound  to  suffer  deteri- 
oration when  the  religious  ideal  was  de- 
based. This  fact  may  serve  as  a  warning 
to  us,  to  be  pondered  in  relation  to  the 
vexed  question  of  church  music — a  ques- 
tion, no  solution  of  which  can  be  reached 
that  will  be  accepted  universally.  But  char- 
ity compels  the  belief  that  all  music  may 
find  its  appropriate  use  in  church,  provided 
always  that  artistic  display,  or  frivolity, 
or  mere  prettiness  is  carefully  eschewed. 
A  **  gospel  hymn  "  may  mean  jjjt  as 
much  to  one  person  as  a  chorus  by 
Handel  or  a  service  by  Barnby  does  to 
pnother.  There  is  room  for  both  forms 
of  music  if  only  the  exponent  of  the  one 
does  not  try  to  constrain  the  advocate  of 
the  other  to  his  way  of  thinking. 


1 


Art  and  Religion. 


87 


Protestant  Christianity  long  looked  ask- 
ance on  the  arts  of  Painting  and  Sculp- 
ture, and  rigorously  excluded  them  from 
its  churches ;  perhaps  this  was  originally 
the  wisest  course  in  view  of  the  tendency 
to  image  worship.  Nor  did  Protestantism 
for  a  long  period  cultivate  Architecture  or 
even  Music  very  enthusiastically.  This, 
too,  may  not  be  a  matter  for  great  regret. 
For,  if  Ruskin  speaks  from  true  observa- 
tion when  he  says  that  he  **  never  knew 
any  one  thoroughly  in  earnest  in  religion 
who  ever  cared  a  button  about  art,'*  this 
very  indifference  to  Art  might  be  closely 
connected  with  the  mighty  aggressiveness 
of  historic  Protestantism.  But  we  should 
be  sorry  to  believe  that  now,  at  least, 
there  are  not  thousands  with  minds  well 
balanced  enough  to  appreciate  Art  at 
its  full  value  without  detriment  to  their 
religion. 


'>0 


f 

■A 


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1 


I 


I 
} 


CHAPTER  V. 


I 

111 


li 


I 


J-* 


n 


THE   POWER  OF  ART  TO   EXPRESS 
THOUGHT  AND   EMOTION. 

HAVING  treated  in  the  preceding  chap- 
ters of  the  relations  of  the  Arts  to 
Science,  to  each  other,  and  to  Religion,  I 
shall  attempt  in  this  chapter  to  give  some 
account  of  the  power  of  Art  to  express 
thought  and  emotion.  It  will  be  at  once 
evident  that  the  Arts  possess  this  power 
in  widely  different  degrees ;  some  appeal- 
ing more  to  thought  than  to  emotion ; 
and  some,  the  reverse. 

Several  meanings  are  attached  to  the 
term  "  expression  '*  in  its  application  to 
Art.     It  is  often  said  of  an  art  work  that 

88 


Power  of  Art. 


89 


it  is  expressive  of  the  time  in  which  it 
was  produced,  or  that  it  reflects  the  spirit 
of  the  age.  Thus  it  is  easy  to  decide 
whether  a  work  belongs  to  the  fifteenth 
century  or  to  the  nineteenth,  not  only 
from  its  technic,  but  also  from  an  inde- 
finable character  that  we  at  once  recog- 
nize as  the  outcome  of  a  different  manner 
of  thought,  or  different  ideals,  from  those 
with  which  we  are  now  familiar.  The  art 
of  Music  furnishes  the  most  striking  illus- 
tration of  this  difference,  owing  to  the 
rapidity  of  its  development  after  its  true 
basis  was  discovered.  The  music  of  the 
end  of  the  last  century  might  be  separated 
by  a  thousand  years  from  that  of  the  end 
of  the  present  century,  so  strong  a  con- 
trast does  it  offer  in  every  respect. 

A  work  of  art  is  often  said  to  be  ex- 
pressive of  national  character;  that  is,  it 
possesses  certain  qualities,  also  difficult 
to  define,  yet  easily  recognizable,  which 


p 


\ 


I  i 


90     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 


I 


i 


'?  I 


1 


■ 


r 


II 


enable  us  to  say  that  it  is  German, 
French,  Italian,  etc.  Of  this  kind  of  ex- 
pression Music  gives  us  a  curious  illustra- 
tion. The  distinctive  characters  of  modern 
German,  French,  and  Italian  music  are  so 
strongly  marked  as  to  be  easily  recognized 
by  those  little  skilled  in  Music.  Yet, 
three  centuries  ago,  it  was  impossible  to 
tell  from  the  character  of  a  piece  of  music 
the  nationality  of  the  writer.  English, 
Italian,  and  Belgian  madrigals  were  as 
like  one  another  as  if  all  were  the  work 
of  one  writer. 

A  work  of  art  may  also  be  expressive  of 
the  individuality  of  its  author.  Thus, 
while  we  recognize  the  music  of  Mozart 
and  Beethoven  as  German,  we  also  recog- 
nize the  individuality  of  each  composer, 
so  strongly  marked  in  his  music  that  the 
veriest  tyro  in  music  will  hardly  mistake 
one  for  the  other. 

But  all  these  kinds  of  expression  are  of 


An 


Power  of  Art. 


91 


comparatively   little   importance.     They 
are  what  logicians  call  the  "  accidents." 
The  important  kinds  of  expression  are  the 
expression  of  thought  and  the  expression 
of  emotion.     By  expression  of  thought, 
we  mean  the  following  qualities,  which 
we  recognize   in  a  work   of  art:    First, 
the  knowledge  which  the  artist  possesses 
of    his  material  ;    second,  the   ability   he 
displays  in  controlling  his  material ;  third, 
and   most   important   of   all,   his  choice 
of  the  best  means  for  the  presentation 
of    his  ideas.      Music   furnishes   innum- 
erable examples  of  this  felicitous  use  of 
material   and   means  :   for  instance,    the 
startling   pizzicato  of   the  violas  in   the 
overture     to     the    Midsummer     Night's 
Dream;  the  use  made  of  the  drum  at  the 
close  of  the  scherzo  of  the  Fifth  Sym- 
phony ;  and  that  glorious  example  in  the 
Hymn  of  Praise,  when,  at  the  close  of  that 
troubled  solo,   "  We  called  through  the 


^'\ 


) 


> 


*> 


92     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 


f 


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■  < 

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lii 


darkness,  *  Watchman !  will  the  night  soon 
pass  ?  *  "  a  soprano  ^inaccompanied  sings, 
after  a  pause,  **  The  night  is  de)^>arting." 

These  are  all  very  simple  things,  yet  it 
is  just  in  this  use  of  simple  means  that 
genius  manifests  itself.  Take  an  example 
in  Painting.  How  much  would  the  Dres- 
den Madonna  lose  if  those  two  baby 
cherubs  at  the  bottom  of  the  picture  were 
left  out : — the  one  with  folded  arms,  the 
other  with  chin  resting  on  the  palm  of  his 
hand;  both  looking  up  with  a  strange 
mixture  of  infantile  and  angelic  wonder 
at  that  other  Child  whose  face  looks  as  if 
it  already  saw  the  long  path  of  woe  before 
it? 

The  expression  of  thought  is  so  blended 
with  that  of  emotion  that  it  is  not  possible 
to  disentangle  them.  Each  needs  the 
other  for  its  highest  manifestations.  By 
expression  of  emotion  we  mean  the 
power,  infused  by  the  artist  into  his  work, 


X\ 


I 


i  t 


i 


V 


Power  of  Art. 


93 


of  awakening  that  state  of  feeling  which 
is  the  complement  of  his  design ;  or,  in 
other  V.  ords,  of  arousing  sympathy  with 
his  ideal. 

Poetry  possesses  this  great  advantage 
over  the  other  arts,  that  it  can  appeal  at 
the  same  time  and  with  equal  force  to 
either  thought  or  emotion,  or  to  both. 
Owing  to  the  fact  that  it  deals  with  the 
thought,  feeling,  and  observation  of  the 
race,  Poetry  speaks  to  universal  experi- 
ence with  a  precision  and  definiteness  that 
no  other  art  possesses.  It  is  the  poet's 
privilege  to  see  farther  and  deeper  into 
the  relations  of  things  than  ordinary 
mortals;  and  to  express  these  relations  in 
such  forceful  terms  that  they  stamp  them- 
selves forever  on  the  memory  of  the  race. 

The  power  of  expression  in  Painting  is 
much  more  limited  than  that  of  Poetry. 
But  within  these  limits  its  precision  is  far 
greater,  for  visual  objects  are  the  clearest 


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94     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 

and  sharpest  presented  to  the  mind. 
Thus,  the  most  exquisite  and  eloquent 
description  of  a  landscape  will  leave  a 
very  hazy  idea  of  it  in  our  minds ;  while 
a  rapid  pencil  sketch  by  an  artist  will 
put  us  in  possession  of  every  salient  point 
at  a  glance.  The  expression  of  historical 
painting,  or  of  painting  representing  ac- 
tion, endurance,  or  any  easily  recognized 
motive,  speaks  for  itself.  But  a  more 
subtle  expression  may  exist  in  landscape 
painting.  This  may  give  rise  to  feelings 
of  gayety,  or  sadness,  or  longing,  or  a 
multitude  of  hardly  definable  emotions. 
It  is  this  quality  which  distinguishes  the 
landscape  of  the  artist  from  that  of  the 
clever  but  uninspired  draughtsman.  The 
draughtsman's  drawing  may  be  techni- 
cally the  more  correct,  but  the  work 
of  the  artist  has  always  over  it  the 
glamour  of  **  the  light  that  never  was 
on  sea  or  land."     A  level  plain  with  a 


1 1 


■:     V. 


Power  of  Art. 


95 


few  trees,  by  Corot,  will  fill  the  beholder 
with  tender  melancholy;  a  hillside  with 
sheep  and  cattle,  by  Troyon,  with  a  feel- 
ing  of  quiet  contentment,  and  gladness, 
and  visions  of  rural  felicity.  On  the 
other  hand,  what  can  exceed  the  sparkle 
and  gayety  of  a  landscape  by  Watteau ; 
even  if  the  fine  ladies  and  gentlemen, 
masquerading  as  arcadian  shepherds  and 
shepherdesses,  were  left  out  ? 

Sculpture  is  still  more  limited  than 
Painting  in  its  expression,  being  restricted 
in  its  choice  of  themes  to  portraiture  and 
allegory.  Yet  this  very  restriction  de- 
mands from  it  an  intensity  and  exactness 
far  beyond  that  required  of  Painting. 
Hence  a  perfect  piece  of  sculpture  is, 
judged  from  the  purely  artistic  stand- 
point, the  most  perfect  example  of  *'  fine 
art"  in  the  world.  The  indescribable 
beauty  of  the  works  that  have  come  down 
to  us  from  the  great  Greek  sculptors  are 


■  H 


i 


I, 


'I  • 


'I 


li 


V   • 


-  il 


I  !: 


96     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 

of  such  ideal  perfection  that  they  seem  to 
be  realizations  of  the  **  Divine  Idea" 
never  attained  in  the  living  form. 

In  Architecture,  so  many  and  such 
diverse  elements  enter  into  the  production 
of  a  perfect  whole  that  it  is  very  difficult 
to  disentangle  them  sufficiently  to  say 
with  certainty  upon  what  the  expression 
of  Architecture  depends.  It  is  only  after 
it  has  fulfilled  all  conditions  of  strength, 
adaptability,  and  so  forth,  that  it  begins 
to  be  beautiful.  The  expression  of  Archi- 
tecture may  be  roughly  divided  into  two 
kinds:  one  of  lightness  and  buoyancy 
combined  with  stability;  the  other  of 
weight  and  strength,  yet  without  dul- 
ness.  Magnitude  has  much  to  do  with 
the  expression  of  Architecture,  so  much 
so  that  even  ugliness  on  a  large  scale  may 
be  impressive.  St.  Peter's  in  Rome  re- 
duced to  the  tenth  part  of  its  present 
dimensions  would  lose  all  its  grandeur. 


Power  of  Art. 


97 


Possibly  the  very  foundation  of  beauty  in 
Architecture  lies  here, — that  it  gives  to 
large  constructions  complex  forms  which 
we  unconsciously  compare  with  the  amor- 
phous masses  in  which  Nature  piles  the 
same  materials;  also  giving  to  these 
forms  a  permanence  which  outlasts  cen- 
turies of  change. 

Antiquity  and  historical  association 
sway  the  judgment  powerfully  in  esti- 
mating the  merits  of  architecture.  It  is 
very  doubtful  if  a  perfect  reproduction  of 
the  Parthenon  on  one  of  our  city  streets 
would  rouse  us  to  enthusiasm.  But  let 
us  view  it  where  it  has  stood  for  more 
than  two  thousand  years,  looking  down 
on  that  sea  which  "  once  resounded  with 
the  world's  debate,'*  and  call  to  mind 
the  world-moving  events  of  which  it  has 
been  a  witness,  from  the  time  when  it 
was  the  symbol  of  the  most  perfect  in- 
tellectual and  artistic  culture  the  world 


>   i 


ill 


i 


I 


I  (II 


98     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 

has  ever  known.  There  it  stood  when 
Greece  declined  and  the  spear  of  Ath- 
ene promachos  was  lowered  before  the 
Roman  Eagles.  The  great  apostle  of 
the  Gentiles  stood  before  it  when  he 
reasoned  ineffectually  with  the  frivolous 
Athenians.  It  saw  the  fierce  wave  of  the 
followers  of  Mahomet ;  and  it  still  stands, 
a  witness  to  the  last  despoiling  of  unhappy 
Greece.  Such  thoughts  and  emotions 
must  powerfully  affect  the  beholder  and 
unconsciously  influence  his  judgment. 

There  is  no  form  of  art  in  which  the 
power  of  expression  is  so  completely  out 
of  all  proportion  to  the  means  as  in  music. 
The  material  of  music,  as  already  pointed 
out,  is  sound;  varied  as  to  pitch  and 
quality,  and  subjected  to  a  few  simple 
combinations.  First  among  its  means  of 
expression  ranks  the  rate  of  motion,  called 
by  musicians  the  tempo.  The  character  or 
expression  of  a  melody  may  be  completely 


Power  of  Art. 


99 


changed  by  changing  its  rate  of  motion ; 
for  example,  that  wailing  melody  in  the 
trio  of  Chopin's  funeral  march  was  appro- 
priated some  years  since  by  a  comic-song 
writer,  and  set  to  some  vulgar  "  con- 
cert hall  *'  words,  with  an  Allegro  instead 
of  the  original  adagio  movement.  The 
metamorphosis  is  so  complete  that  it  is 
hardly  possible  to  recognize  the  melody. 
There  is  a  mythical  story  to  the  effect 
that  when  Queen  Mary  was  led  to  execu- 
tion, her  vindictive  enemy,  Elizabeth, 
gave  command  that  the  musicians  should 
play  the  "  rogues*  march."  But  the 
leader  of  the  band,  who  felt  some  sym- 
pathy for  the  unfortunate  Mary,  made 
his  musicians  play  it  very  slowly,  thus 
changing  it  from  a  rollicking  tune  to  a 
melancholy  dirge. 

Next  to  rate  of  movement,  as  a  means 
of  expression,  comes  force,  or  variation 
in  the  loudness  or  softness  of  the  sound. 


s 


I 


n 


tf 


lOO     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 


i'  I 


Mr 
■I  i 


All  the  mechanical  means  of  producing 
expression,  indicated  by  the  terms  accent, 
legato,  staccato,  rubato,  ritenuto,  etc., 
are  merely  various  applications  of  these 
two  means.  But,  although  we  may 
specify  in  exact  detail  the  technical 
means  by  which  music  gains  expression, 
we  are  as  far  as  ever  from  solving  the 
problem  of  the  power  of  music  to  express 
or  excite  emotion.  The  problem  is,  in 
fact,  insoluble  in  the  present  state  of 
psychological  knowledge. 

All  shades  and  varieties  of  emotion  are 
said  to  be  modifications  and  blendings  of 
the  feelings  of  joy  or  sorrow,  pleasure 
or  pain.  Poetry  reaches  these  springs  of 
emotion  by  presenting  definite  images 
to  the  mind ;  Painting  and  Sculpture,  by 
presenting  definite  images  to  the  eye. 
Music  seems  to  go  deeper  than  they  do, 
because  it  makes  its  appeal  to  the  emo- 
tions without  the  need  of  any  concrete 


Power  of  Art. 


lOI 


intermediary  symbols.  For  example,  in 
Tennyson's  exquisite  lyric,  Tears y  Idle 
Tears  J  the  poet  by  calling  up  several  men- 
tal pictures  gives  vivid  expression  to  that 
vague  feeling  of  regret,  half  painful,  half 
pleasant,  which  is  caused  by  '*  looking 
on  the  happy  autumn  fields,*'  **  and 
thinking  of  the  days  that  are  no  more. '  * 
The  beauty  and  the  glory  of  spring  and 
summer  are  gone,  and  winter  is  coming 
with  the  *'  Death  of  the  year.**  Then 
the  picture  of  a  ship,  "  That  sinks  with 
all  we  love  **  below  the  far  horizon,  gives  a 
more  intense  and  personal  interest,  which 
culminates  in  the  stanza,  one  of  the  most 
perfect  in  the  English  language,  that  pic- 
tures one  dying  at  the  early  dawn  of  a  fair 
summer  morning,  hearing  for  the  last  time 
the  "  earliest  pipe  of  half-awakened  birds," 
while  to  his  fading  eyes  the  **  casement 
slowly  grows  a  glimmering  square,**  and 
he  feels  that,  forevermore,  his  only  part 


i' 


I02     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 


i 


"  In  all  the  pomp  that  fills 
The  circuit  of  the  summer  hills, 
Is — that  his  grave  is  green." 

It  is  hardly  possible  that  language 
could  give  a  more  vivid  expression  to  that 
vague  sadness,  "  Wild  with  all  regret," 
than  is  given  in  this  short  lyric.  Yet 
this  same  emotion  may  be  excited  in  even 
intenser  degree  by  Music;  as,  for  exam- 
ple, by  the  slow  movement  of  Beethoven's 
Fi/tk  Symphony,  The  poem  is  limited 
by  its  definiteness.  The  expression  of  the 
music  is  limitless  because  of  its  indefi- 
niteness.  One  deals  with  a  few  striking 
manifestations  of  the  emotion ;  the  other, 
with  the  emotion  itself.  But  it  should 
never  be  forgotten  that  it  is  only  in  the 
widest,  most  general  sense  that  music  ex- 
presses emotion.  The  hearer  gets  from 
music  only  what  his  musical  intelligence 
fits  him  to  receive. 

Without  a  language,  Music  yet  speaks 


Power  of  Art. 


103 


to  every  hearer  in  terms  which  he  alone 
can  interpret;  hence  the  danger  of  at- 
tempting to  "  read  into  "  music  a  definite 
meaning.  A  hundred  people  may  listen 
to,  and  equally  enjoy,  a  symphony ;  and 
yet  no  two  among  them  be  affected  by  it 
in  the  same  way.  If  it  has  a  **  motto  " 
or  "  signpost,"  like  the  poor  painter's 
**  this  is  a  horse,"  some  among  the  num- 
ber will  imagine  that  the  music  and  the 
motto  agree.  But  those  who  are  gifted 
with  the  true  musical  instinct  forget,  if 
the  music  is  good,  all  about  the  motto, 
and  judge  the  music  on  its  own  merits. 
Composers  would  do  well  to  accept  as  an 
axiom,  **  Good  music  needs  no  motto, 
and  bad  music  is  not  helped  by  one." 
This  ignis  fatuus  of  definite  expression  in 
music  has  proved  a  stumbling-block  to 
even  the  greatest  composers.  The  com- 
poser of  the  Fifth  and  Ninth  Symphonies 
also  wrote  the  Pastoral  Symphony ^  with 


%  i 


I 


I04     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 


t 


B 


H' 


its  bird-songs  and  thunder-storm,  which 
remove  it  at  once  from  the  class  of  great 
art  works  to  the  same  category  as  Stei- 
belt's  Storm  Rondo,  The  Battle  of  Prague , 
and  that  other  **  storm  "  piece  which  is  a 
great  favorite  with  many  organists,  in 
which  thunder  is  imitated  **  to  the  life  " 
by  putting  down  several  pedals  together. 
Of  course,  anything  done  by  Beethoven 
must  be  better  than  the  same  kind  of 
thing  done  by  another;  but  at  the  same 
time  imitative  music  is  a  thing  Beethoven 
should  not  have  done. 

It  seems  like  a  lame  conclusion  to  an 
investigation  into  the  power  of  music  for 
expression,  to  say  that  it  has  no  definite 
expression ;  but  if  the  truth  of  this  con- 
clusion were  as  clear  to  composers  as  it 
ought  to  be,  it  would  be  the  means  of 
keeping  them  from  falling  into  many 
lapses  from  the  standard  of  true  art. 
And,  better  still,    it  would   serve  as   a 


Power  of  Art. 


105 


guide  to  their  efforts,  directing  them  to 
the  true  sources  of  musical  expression, — 
noble,  beautiful  melody,  perfect  form, 
and  the  careful  avoidance  of  even  the 
least  suspicion  of  the  bizarre,  meretricious, 
or  commonplace. 


I 


I 


I''-* 


I  i-  ^ 


I  'Ki 


CHAPTER  VI. 


VOCAL  AND   INSTRUMENTAL   MUSIC. 


WIDELY  separated  as  vocal  and  in- 
strumental music  now  are  in  their 
chief  characteristics,  this  difference  is  of 
comparatively  recent  origin.  For  a  long 
period  of  time  the  instrumental  was  sub- 
servient entirely,  or  nearly  so,  to  the  vocal ; 
serving  merely  as  an  accompaniment.  For 
several  reasons,  vocal  music  had  the  start 
of  instrumental  in  the  race.  First,  be- 
cause the  voice  is  nature's  instrument, 
and  its  use  in  song  is  almost  as  natural  as 
in  speech.  Second,  because  there  is  an 
innate  tendency  to  give  rhythmic  expres- 
sion to  intense  or  exalted  emotion;  and 

io6 


Vocal  and  Instrumental  Music.    107 

rhythmic  utterance  easily  glides  into 
melodic.  Hence  the  conditions  from  the 
beginning  were  favorable  to  the  earlier 
development  of  vocal  music. 

In  early  times  the  poet  and  musician 
were  always  united  in  the  same  indi- 
vidual. Tradition  represents  Homer  as 
wandering  through  Greece,  reciting  or 
chanting  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey  to  the  ac- 
companiment of  a  lyre.  This  union  of 
poet  and  musician  lasted  for  many  cen- 
turies. We  meet  with  it  again  in  the 
stories  of  Saxon  and  Celtic  harpers,  who 
were  the  chroniclers,  in  verse,  of  the  his- 
tory of  their  times ;  again  in  the  trouba- 
dours and  minnesingers,  who,  discarding, 
for  the  greater  part,  the  themes  of  war 
and  arms,  sang  of  love  and  beauty,  to  the 
accompaniment  of  many  now-forgotten 
instruments.  But  as  all  progress  means 
the  specialization  of  function,  the  time 
came  when  the  poet   and   the   musician 


\  I 


•  (. 


; 


M'  i 


)  i 


\^ 


1 08     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 

were  no  longer  united  in  the  same  person. 
And,  strange  to  say,  the  separation  seems 
to  have  gone  on  with  ever-accelerating 
speed,  until  it  is  now  a  rare  thing  to  find 
a  poet  who  knows  anything  about  music ; 
and,  I  regret  to  say,  no  rarity  to  find 
musicians  who  are  ignorant  of  the  rules 
of  poetic  metres,  judging  by  the  havoc 
they  often  make  of  them  when  putting 
music  to  words. 

When  the  poet  separated  from  the 
musician,  the  latter  performed,  for  a  long 
time,  the  functions  of  singer  and  player; 
either  as  the  retainer  of  some  noble  verse- 
maker,  or  as  a  wandering  minstrel.  The 
next  step  in  differentiation  separated  the 
singer  from  the  player.  In  this  case, 
also,  the  divergence  has  rapidly  widened 
until  in  too  many  instances  vocalists  and 
instrumentalists  have  come  to  look  upon 
each  other  as  natural  enemies. 

These  different  steps  in  the  progress  of 


i 


' 


Vocal  and  Instrumental  Music.    109 

Music  have  taken  place  very  slowly.  The 
art  of  Music,  like  the  century-plant,  grew 
a  leaf  at  a  time,  for  many  years,  until,  hav- 
ing stored  up  all  its  material,  it  suddenly 
bloomed,  a  little  more  than  a  hundred 
years  since, — and  the  world  beheld  the 
birth  of  a  new**  fine  art."  Both  vocal 
and  instrumental  music  have,  in  their 
progress,  gone  through  a  process  of  further 
subdivision.  Vocal  music  began  as  a 
rude  chant  with  very  little  pretension  to 
melody.  Then  the  music  gained  a  rhythm 
independent  of  the  words ;  probably  from 
the  dance.  Then  musical  learning,  which 
for  many  years  was  devoted  only  to 
church  music,  was  applied  to  secular 
music,  and  resulted  in  the  production  of 
the  madrigal,  chanson,  etc.  But  as  yet 
there  was  nothing  in  the  character  of 
these  secular  compositions  to  distinguish 
them  from  the  church  compositions.  A 
sixteenth-century    madrigal    and    motet 


7 


I  lo     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 


ii 


h  iii 


1  : 


■'     I 


i 


( 


hi 


I ' 


might  change  words  and  no  one  could 
discover  it  by  any  inappropriateness  in 
the  character  of  the  music.  Many  of  the 
most  admired  of  the  German  chorals, 
tunes  that  seem  to  breathe  the  very  spirit 
of  piety,  were  originally  secular  songs. 

So  a  further  subdivision  was  neces- 
sary, into  sacred  and  secular.  The  sacred 
music  was  already  well  established,  but 
the  secular  had  not  as  yet  discovered  its 
own  charactr^r.  This  discovery  was  made 
by  the  invention  of  the  opera.  It  was 
found  that  music  possessed  a  dramatic 
power  hitherto  unsuspected;  and  from 
this  time  secular  music  was  free  to  pursue 
its  own  path.  It  is  matter  for  great 
regret  that  these  paths  have  not  always 
been  kept  severely  apart.  In  the  dra- 
matic style  the  **  art  "  will  obtrude  itself 
at  the  expense  of  the  religious  interest, 
and  the  performance  of  a  fine  choir  be- 
comes simply  an  aesthetic  affair. 


^ 


Vocal  and  Instrumental  Music,    iii 


This  confusion  between  sacred  and 
dramatic  music  's  responsible  for  many 
of  the  monstrosities  we  hear  in  **  Choirs 
and  places  where  they  sing."  Even  in 
Palestrina's  time  they  took  secular  songs 
as  themes  for  masses.  Red  Roses  and 
AdieUy  My  Loves  were  two  favorites. 
Shakespeare  tells  of  Puritans  **  singing 
psalms  to  hornpipes."  And  we  have 
often  heard  JesuSy  Lover  of  My  Soul  sung 
to  When  the  Swallows  Homeward  Fly, 
This  practice  is  frequently  defended  by 
the  foolish  saying  that  "  the  devil  should 
not  have  all  the  good  music  ";  a  saying 
containing  two  fallacies  —  one,  that  all 
music  which  is  not  sacred  music  must  of 
necessity  belong  to  his  satanic  majesty; 
the  other,  that  the  term  "  good  "  can  be 
applied  to  any  of  his  property. 

In  the  course  of  its  development,  vocal 
music  has  devoted  itself  at  one  time  to 
quality  of  tone,  at  another  to  facility  of 


h 


( 


I    ' 


t,l 


/.I 


n 


112     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 


if 


u 


■■ii 


i    ill' 


!  M  t 


II 


■i! 


1 


execution  ;  in  both  these  aims  it  has 
worked  wonders.  It  has,  with  few  ex- 
ceptions, never  devoted  itself  to  distinct- 
ness of  enunciation.  While  this  may 
sound  uncomplimentary  to  many  singers, 
yet  I  venture  to  say  that  one  will  hear 
better,  clearer  enunciation  at  the  perform- 
ance of  a  well  trained  troupe  of  *'  min- 
strels **  than  one  is  likely  to  hear  at 
concert,  opera,  or  church.  The  minstrels 
know  that  their  success  depends  mainly 
on  their  words  being  understood. 

All  the  possibilities  of  bravura  singing 
were  exhausted  by  the  singers  of  the  last 
part  of  the  eighteenth  century.  Some  of 
the  examples  of  their  powers  in  this  re- 
spect, to  be  found  in  the  writings  of  Por- 
pora,  are  almost  enough  to  make  one 
doubt  whether  those  songs  were  ever 
sung.  Since  then  a  better  taste  has  pre- 
vailed, and  it  is  now  universally  recognized 
that   breadth,  simplicity,  and  a  **  canti- 


■r*- 


I 


Vocal  and  Instrumental  Music.    113 

lene  *'  style  are  the  things  to  be  sought 
in  vocal  music. 

There  are  several  reasons  why  instru- 
mental music  was  so  far  behind  vocal,  in 
its  development:  the  inferiority  of  the 
instruments,  the  meagre  skill  of  the  play- 
ers, and,  more  than  anything  else,  the 
fact  that  the  musical  world  had  not  yet 
discovered  that  music  might  have  a  mean- 
ing entirely  independent  of  that  gained 
by  being  associated  with  words.  Before 
this  fact  could  be  recognized,  it  was  ne- 
cessary that  the  stiff,  cumbrous  scales  of 
the  church  system  should  be  supplanted 
by  a  more  flexible  system.  This  came 
about  when  the  art  of  tempering  the  scale 
was  discovered. 

The  earliest  attempts  at  instrumental 
music  were  dance  tunes.  Then  the  mad- 
rigals, etc. ,  written  for  voices,  were  played 
(without  voices)  on  the  "  viols."  Then 
the   dance  tunes  were  lengthened,   and 

8 


ft/1 


1 14     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 


several  were  collected  into  what  were 
called  *  *  lessons, "  or  *  *  suites.  * '  Then  the 
sonata  form  was  invented,  and  after  some 
experimentation  settled  into  the  form  as 
we  now  have  it. 

The  existence  of  instrumental  music 
once  established,  there  went  on,  along 
with  the  musical  development  just 
sketched,  the  study  of  the  capabilities 
and  tone  qualities  of  each  instrument, 
with  the  object  of  finding  out  the  most 
effective  way  of  treating  each.  Thus  the 
complexity  of  instrumental  music  began 
to  increase.  Instrumental  music  was  free 
to  expand  in  another  way,  being  no  long- 
er subject  to  the  limitations  of  vocal  music 
in  compass  or  to  the  susceptibility  of  the 
performers  to  fatigue.  A  compass  of 
about  four  octaves  includes  all  that  the 
human  voice  is  capable  of,  while  the 
orchestra  has  about  double  this  compass. 
The  throat  and  chest  soon  tire;  the  fin- 


■ 


Vocal  and  Instrumental  Music.    115 

gers  of  the  pianist  or  violinist  are  tireless. 
Fine  voices,  such  as  great  singers  must 
possess,  are  the  rarest  things  in  the  world. 
Therefore  their  possessors  are  all  soloists. 
On  the  other  hand,  it  is  comparatively 
easy  to  gather  a  company  of  trained  in- 
strumentalists. 

The  chorus,  which  affords  by  far  the 
most  impressive  way  in  which  the  voice 
may  be  used,  is  always  composed,  even 
under  the  most  favorable  circumstances, 
of  more  or  less  untrained  singers,  and  in- 
cludes many  inferior  voices.  Perhaps  the 
world  will  never  have  a  chance  to  hear 
the  effects  a  chorus  might  produce  if  all 
the  sopranos  were  Melbas,  the  altos, 
Carys,  and  the  tenors  and  basses,  De 
Reszkes,  all  trained  to  the  perfection  of 
a  great  orchestra,  and — more  Utopian 
still — all  willing,  as  the  artists  of  a  great 
orchestra  are,  to  submit  loyally  to  the 
control  of  a  great  leader. 


ii6     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 


Each  kind  of  music — vocal  and  instru- 
mental— has  its  special  advantages  and 
disadvantages.  The  special  advantage 
of  vocal  music  is  that,  calling  in  the  aid 
of  language,  it  is  enabled  to  express  with 
precision  all  shades  and  varieties  of  emo- 
tion, words  and  music  aiding  each  other. 
On  the  other  hand,  its  disadvantages  are : 
its  limited  compass,  its  lack  of  tone  color, 
and  the  limitation  of  its  expression  to 
that  of  the  words  which  accompany  it. 

The  advantages  of  instrumental  music 
are :  its  practically  unlimited  compass,  its 
exhaustless  variety  of  tone  color,  and  its 
freedom  from  limitation  by  the  union 
with  language.  It  possesses  a  much 
greater  range  of  expression,  greater  be- 
cause of  its  very  indefiniteness.  In 
addition,  the  executive  powers  of  the 
instrumentalist  are  far  in  advance  of  those 
of  the  vocalist ;  and  the  character  of  each 
instrument  has  developed  a  mode  of  treat- 


Vocal  and  Instrumental  Music.    117 

ment  appropriate  to  each.  So  strongly 
marked  has  this  become  that,  to  the  mu- 
sician, the  words  "  horn  passage,*'  "oboe 
passage,  * '  "  piano  passage,  * '  etc. ,  convey  a 
distinct  impression  of  the  character  of  the 
passage  signified.  But  it  is  to  instrumen- 
tal music,  above  all,  that  the  large  com- 
plex **  forms  **  belong — the  sonata,  in  all 
its  varieties,  from  the  piano  sonata  to  the 
orchestral  symphony, — art  forms  in  which 
we  have  what  may  be  called  a  logical 
development  of  a  few  simple  melodic 
propositions. 

There  will  always  be  a  difference  of 
opinion  as  to  which  is  the  greater,  vocal 
or  instrumental  music.  It  is  a  question 
that  must  be  settled  by  each  one's  per- 
sonal preferences.  While  it  is  true  that 
the  scope  of  instrumental  music  is  greater, 
there  is  yet  a  something  in  the  quality  of 
the  human  voice,  when  at  its  best,  that, 
even  apart  from  the  words  sung,  rouses  a 


ii8     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 


i> 


h 


s 


It 


I 


response  in  us  which  is  beyond  the  reach 
of  the  instrument.  We  can  give  no 
higher  praise  to  the  instrumentalist  than 
to  say  *'  he  makes  his  instrument  sing  *' ; 
recognizing  in  the  saying  that  the  nearer 
the  approach  to  the  voice  the  greater  the 
beauty  of  the  performance. 

Vocal  and  instrumental  music  have 
reacted  on  each  other  in  several  ways, 
but  the  debt  of  the  instrumental  to  the 
vocal  music  is  much  the  greater.  In  addi- 
tion to  teaching  the  instrument  to ''sing," 
the  voice  has  taught  it  to  "  phrase.  '*  Phras- 
ing, which  in  its  origin  was  a  necessity 
in  vocal  music,  on  account  of  the  breath- 
ing, was  soon  developed  into  an  art  for 
the  enhancing  of  the  expression.  The 
instrumentalist  soon  found  that  by  apply- 
ing this  art  to  his  performance  he  might 
greatly  augment  its  effectiveness.  The 
debt  of  vocal  to  instrumental  music  is 
very  small,  confined  chiefly  to  the  bor- 


' 


"i 


^ 


Vocal  and  Instrumental  Music.    119 


? 


^ 


rowing  of  certain  instrumental  passages, 
such  as  extended  arpeggios,  and  leaps  of 
intervals  that  were  at  one  time  thought 
impossible  to  voices.  In  fact,  the  con- 
stant hearing  of  difificult  melodic  and  har- 
monic successions  in  instrumental  music 
has,  unconsciously  to  themselves,  made 
the  singing  of  such  passages  easy  even 
to  ordinary  singers. 

The  total  emancipation  of  instrumental 
from  vocal  music  has  brough*-  up  an  im- 
portant question :  What  should  be  their 
relative  positions  when  united  ?  Which 
one  should  be  subordinate  ?  Or,  should 
they  be  on  a  perfect  equality  ?  The 
terms  of  this  union  have  changed  ma- 
terially during  the  last  century.  In 
Handel's  time  the  old  subserviency  of  the 
instruments  still  obtained  in  great  degree. 
Haydn,  Mozart,  Beethoven,  Mendelssohn, 
— each  mark  a  distinct  step  in  the  advance 
of  the  instrumental  part  of  the  combina- 


I20     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 


1 


tion.  But  with  all  these  great  writers 
there  is  constantly  evinced  a  determina- 
tion that  if  either  one  is  to  predominate 
it  shall  be  the  voice,  never  the  instrument 
at  the  expense  of  the  voice.  Hence,  al- 
though we  find  in  these  writers  infinite 
variety  and  beauty  in  the  accompani- 
ments, their  whole  purpose  is  to  add  to 
the  interest  of  the  vocal  part. 

But  *'  since  these  fathers  fell  asleep," 
there  has  grown  up  a  school  that  seeks  to 
exalt  the  instrument  at  the  expense  of 
the  voice,  working  on  the  theory  that  to 
the  instrument  belongs  the  task  of  inter- 
preting the  deeper  meanings  of  the  words, 
which  the  voice  declaims  as  a  sort  of 
commentary  on  the  instrumental  part — as 
it  were — to  let  the  hearer  know  what  the 
*'  music  '*  is  supposed  to  mean.  This 
view  of  the  relations  between  the  voice 
and  the  instrument  has  developed  in 
Germany  into  a  curious,  mongrel  sort  of 


Vocal  and  Instrumental  Music.    121 


performance,  —  the  accompanying  of  a 
recitation  by  an  instrumental  '*  commen- 
tary.*' Some  of  the  foremost  composers 
have  written  these  hybrid  affairs.  These 
accompanied  recitations  are,  for  several 
reasons,  a  complete  reductio  ad  absurdum 
of  this  theory.  In  attempting  to  recite 
with  music,  the  reciter  is  almost  certain 
to  fall  into  a  **  singsong  "  monotone  that 
is  sure  to  be  out  of  tune  with  the  music. 
Again,  musical  sounds  make  themselves 
heard  with  much  greater  ease  than  spoken 
sounds;  therefore  the  recitation  must  be 
very  loud,  or  the  music  so  soft  that  it  loses 
all  character.  Finally,  "  speaking  "  and 
*'  music  "  are  mutually  destructive;  they 
appeal  to  different  departments  of  the 
mind,  and  it  is  impossible  to  carry  on 
successfully  at  the  same  time  two  entirely 
unrelated  mental  operations. 

The  manner  of  combining  voices  and 
instruments  in  vogue  during   the    great 


122     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 


r  ' 


period  of  composition  should  surely  be 
recognized  as  the  right  one.  The  orches- 
tra is  a  huge  instrument  of  unlimited 
power.  The  voice  is  a  tender  instrument 
of  limited  power,  quite  unfit  to  cope  with 
its  mighty  companion,  but  possessing  an 
exquisite  beauty  of  its  own,  to  enhance 
which  should  be  the  sole  object  of  the 
orchestra  when  they  are  conjoined.  There 
is  nothing  more  painful  than  to  watch 
the  efforts  of  a  fine  singer  to  make  head- 
way against  the  overwhelming  sound 
billows  of  an  orchestra,  let  loose  by  some 
frantic  seeker  after  **  effects.'*  There  is 
nothing  more  agreeable  than  to  listen  to 
the  same  voice  when  every  word,  note, 
and  phrase  is  enhanced  by  well-designed 
accompaniment.  The  voice  is  then  like 
the  fine  golden  line  which  may  sometimes 
be  seen  in  the  mazes  of  an  arabesque. 
Without  the  background  of  tracery  the 
gold  line  would  be  meaningless;  without 


Vocal  and  Instrumental  Music.    123 

the  line,  the  tracery  would  be  meaning- 
less; but  their  union  in  due  proportion 
means  a  perfect  work  of  art. 

This   tendency  to  over-elaboration  of 
the  accompaniment  is  equally  visible  in 
the  modern  songs  with  piano  accompani- 
ment, which  are  often  so  difficult  as  to 
require  a  virtuoso  for  their  proper  per- 
formance.      Without    doubt    the    older 
forms    of   accompaniment,    such   as  the 
**  Alberti  bass,*'  are  worn  out  and  thread- 
bare.   Still  that  is  no  reason   why   the 
composers  should  rush  to  the  other  ex- 
treme—  as   though   they   wished   to   do 
everything  in  their  power  to  distract  the 
attention  of  the  listener  from  the  voice  to 
the  piano.     The  songs  of  Schubert  are  the 
most  perfect  examples  of  a  just  balance 
between  voice  and  piano.     The  accom- 
paniment  always  "  means    something," 
yet    never    overrides    the    melody,    but 
rather  sets  it  oif  to  the  greatest  advan- 


i 


m 


124     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 


I 


i)  / 


I 


tage.  The  instruments  have  **  ample 
scope  and  verge  enough  **  in  those  great 
sound  forms,  of  which  I  have  spoken, 
without  trying  to  seize  the  domain  of  the 
voice. 

As  the  order  of  evolution  is  an  upward 
tendency,  and  as  in  Music  the  last  step 
was  the  evolution  of  these  large  forms  of 
instrumental  music,  we  are  surely  justified 
in  calling  them  the  highest  development 
of  the  art  of  Music.  They  are  the  one 
contribution  of  the  modern  world  to  Art. 
Poet,  painter,  sculptor,  architect,  per- 
fected their  art  long  ago.  But  the  per- 
fecting of  the  art  of  Music  was  the  work 
of  three  men  (the  greatest  of  whom  died 
a  little  more  than  seventy  years  ago): 
Haydn,  Mozart,  Beethoven.  I  do  not 
wish  to  be  understood  as  exalting  instru- 
mental music  at  the  expense  of  vocal. 
There  are  no  degrees  in  perfection,  al- 
though **  one  star  differeth  from  another 


Vocal  and  Instrumental  Music.    125 


in  glory."  The  lily  is  as  perfect  as  the 
oak  ;  the  song,  in  its  degree,  as  fine  as 
the  symphony:  the  symphony  is  like 
the  architecture  which  builds  stupendous 
temples ;  the  song,  like  that  which  builds 
for  domestic  uses.  It  is  only  on  stated 
occasions  that  we  visit  the  temples,  but 
we  live  in  the  houses.  The  few  may  rise 
to  the  comprehension  of  the  symphony, 
but  all  may  take  the  song  to  their  hearts. 
I  wish  to  add  a  few  words  about  the 
singers  and  players.  As  the  art  of  phras- 
ing is  the  most  essential  element  in  per- 
formance, and  as  it  had  its  origin  in 
singing,  it  needs  no  argument  to  prove 
the  necessity  to  all  instrumentalists  of  a 
knowledge  of  singing;  not  simply  the 
reading  at  sight  of  a  vocal  part,  but  a 
knowledge  of  the  management  of  the 
voice.  The  pianist  who  knows  how  to 
sing  will  sing  on  the  piano,  with  an  ex- 
pression  far   beyond  that  which  results 


w 


126     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 


!     ^ 


r 


1\ 


u 


II 


!         1 


from  mechanically  following  the  indica- 
tions on  the  music,  or  the  carefully 
iterated  directions  of  a  teacher.  There 
are  numberless  shadings  in  force,  accent, 
and  tempo  that  it  is  not  possible  to  indi- 
cate on  the  score  without  overloading  it 
with  directions.  These  things  the  trained 
singer  does,  guided  by  the  meaning  of 
the  words,  and  transfers  them  to  the 
piano  or  violin  with  infinite  gain  in  the 
effect. 

If  players  should  learn  to  sing,  singers 
should  also  learn  to  play.  It  is  a  com- 
mon reproach  that  singers  have  very  little 
idea  of  time.  Many  of  them  have  an 
idea  that  it  is  the  duty  of  the  accompan- 
ist, even  of  the  orchestra,  to  follow  them 
in  all  their  vagaries.  Nothing  will  cure 
this  notion  like  1  arning  an  instrument 
and  playing  in  concert  with  other  instru- 
ments. Many  singers  imagine  that  their 
disregard  of  time  adds  to  the  expression 


' 


Vocal  and  Instrumental  Music.    127 

of  their  singing;  but  any  experienced 
orchestra  player  will  testify  that  the 
greater  the  singers  the  easier  it  is  to 
accompany  them.  Artists  do  not  base 
their  idea  of  expression  on  the  notion 
that  one  bar  may  have  three  beats, 
another  five,  and  an  occasional  bar  be 
left  out  altogether.  If  they  do  make  a 
change  in  the  rate  of  movement  it  is 
done  at  a  place  and  in  a  way  that  at  once 
commends  itself  to  the  accompanist  as 
appropriate,  and  he  has  no  difficulty  in 
following. 

I  remarked  some  time  ago  that  the  at- 
titude of  singer  and  accompanist  towards 
each  other  was  often  that  of  natural 
enemies.  Each  is  determined  that  the 
other  shall  not  have  his  own  way.  The 
singer  wants  the  accompanist  to  be  a 
willing  slave,  the  accompanist  wants  the 
singer  to  have  some  regard  to  the  differ- 
ence  between  a  whole  and  a  half  note. 


1 

r 


>n 


I  ul ! 


It 


m 


128     Music  and  the  Comrade  Arts. 

The  result  is  that  the  song  is  a  struggle, 
at  the  close  of  which  each  blames  the 
other  for  its  shortcomings.  If  singers 
would  learn  to  play  they  would  soon  dis- 
cover that  an  accompaniment  is  an  essen- 
tial part  of  the  song.  They  would  learn 
that  the  accompanist,  who  is  generally  a 
musician, — for  it  requires  a  musician  to 
be  an  accompanist, — is  likely  to  have 
some  justification  for  the  disdain  in  which 
he  holds  the  musical  acquirements  of  the 
ordinary  singer. 

Good  musical  work  in  any  department 
necessitates  a  knowledge  of  every  other 
department.  It  is  a  fatal  mistake  to 
neglect  or  underrate  one,  because  you 
have  made  a  specialty  of  another.  There- 
fore, while  opportunity  affords,  gain  some 
knowledge  of  every  department  of  the 
art ;  thus  only  may  you  attain  a  thorough 
mastery  of  the  one  you  have  chosen  as 
the  special  field  of  your  efforts. 


Arts. 


Tuggle, 
les  the 
singers 
)on  dis- 
1  essen- 
Id  learn 
erally  a 
cian  to 

0  have 

1  which 
s  of  the 

irtment 
y  other 
take  to 
se  you 

There- 
in some 

of  the 
lorough 
osen  as 


